U.S. 93 continues to be a route ?for drug and even human trafficking.?
In referring to events that have happened in the past several years, County Sheriff Kerry Lee said he views 93 as being ?a major everything route,? including for commercial and private vehicles. ?It is often a preferred route for running illegal drugs because of the amount of law enforcement on the freeways. They hammer those heavy traffic areas, but 93 is quite busy also.?
U.S. 93 is a route utilized a lot by those transporting illegal drugs for another reason as well, Lee mentioned. ?It is a straight shot between Canada and Mexico.? From Yuma, just over the U.S. border, to Kalispell, Montana, and beyond into Canada, is about 1,400 miles, ?but it?s a pretty good route for whoever may not want to be on the freeways.?
He noted that sheriff?s offices and the highway patrols in Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Montana do the best they can, but some illegal drug transports do get by.
For 2019, Lee noted the efforts by his department just to police Lincoln County on arrests of all types, not including the Nevada Highway Patrol (NHP), registered 4,226 calls requiring an officer to respond; 491 legal investigations; 354 in-county arrests (not including NHP); 1,270 bookings into the Lincoln County Detention Center; 2,517 traffic stops countywide and 730 citations issued.
Lee said, ?Our numbers have been steadily rising over the years in all the categories, but I don?t know what the present numbers are in some of the other rural Nevada counties.?
On another subject, Lee said the county has not had to deal with winter search and rescue efforts lately. ?With the lack of snow this winter, we have been pretty fortunate. We typically have several during Christmas tree season, but not this year [2019]. And we did not have any illegal mountain marijuana grows discovered in Lincoln County. We did assist on one in another county, but not here.?