‘Armed Encounters’ Show Sharp Increase Locally : Assaults on Border Agents Decline in S.D., Rise Elsewhere

Attacks upon Border Patrol agents may be increasing elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, but in the San Diego area the number of assaults against agents has been steadily declining for three years.

However, although officials have recorded fewer assaults, there has also been a sharp increase in nonviolent armed encounters involving border agents in San Diego.

Those are the apparent conclusions to be drawn from three years of statistics on violence released by the Border Patrol, an enforcement arm of the U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

San Diego houses the single largest patrol contingent--more than 800 agents--in the nation. That number is being supplemented by several hundred others as part of a nationwide patrol buildup. San Diego, gateway to the booming job markets of California, is also the single most popular entry point for foreigners seeking to enter the United States illegally, accounting for more than a third of all those arrested.

‘More People With Weapons’

Unlike their superiors in Washington, Border Patrol officials contacted recently in San Diego were circumspect about characterizing the level of attacks against officers, pointedly avoiding declarations that violence has either increased or decreased.

“It’s hard for me to say that violence is greater than it used to be when the number of assaults is down,” said Dana Cunningham, a Border Patrol spokesman in San Diego, who was himself shot while on duty in September, 1985. “But the figures also say that we’re meeting more people with weapons.”

In Washington, officials are not quite so hesitant. Earlier this month, immigration service Commissioner Alan Nelson and other high-ranking federal officials spoke out about what they characterized as a growing problem with violent attacks against federal agents posted along the U. S.-Mexico border.

Officials noted that the number of “firearm assaults” against border agents rose from 23 in fiscal 1987 to 34 in fiscal 1988. (The 1988 number, while up from the previous year, only equaled the number of such firearm assaults in 1986, Duke Austin, an immigration service spokesman in Washington, said Friday.)

No Specific Figures Kept

In San Diego, however, Cunningham said, the patrol keeps no specific figures on firearm assaults. Instead, the patrol lumps all attacks against agents together in a general umbrella category of “assaults”--a figure that encompasses an array of attackers, including those armed with rocks, guns, knives or only their fists.

In fiscal 1988, the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, officials reported 85 actual assaults against patrol agents, down from 99 such assaults in fiscal 1987 and 128 in fiscal 1986. (A suspect has not shot an agent since 1985.)

But, officials say, that doesn’t necessarily mean that violence is down here.

The patrol in San Diego maintains another statistic that is germane to the issue: Officials also track the number of “armed encounters” involving agents and suspects. Such armed encounters, Cunningham said, encompass incidents in which agents simply find a knife or gun on the person--or in the vehicle--of someone who is apprehended. There is no assault in these cases, Cunningham said.

In fiscal 1988, patrol agents in San Diego registered 108 such armed encounters, continuing an upward trend. In fiscal 1987, officials counted 70 such encounters and, in fiscal 1986, the number was only 49.

Automatic Weapons

The armed-encounter numbers tend to confirm, in part, what INS officers in Washington maintain--namely, that violence is on the upswing. In fact, Austin, the INS spokesman in Washington, noted that agents in Arizona and Texas have increasingly encountered suspects--usually drug traffickers--employing AK-47s and other automatic weapons. At least twice this year, officials said, suspects with automatic weapons have opened fired on border agents in Arizona, although no one was hurt in either encounter.

“Fifteen or 20 years ago, it was unheard of to find automatic weapons along the border,” Austin said.

Along the border in San Diego, however, automatic weapons remain somewhat unusual. Cunningham could name only one recent incident involving illegal aliens with automatic weapons, a well-publicized case earlier this year in which four armed Mexican marines said they mistakenly wandered across the border. They were returned to Mexico.

Perhaps the force most accustomed to violence near the international boundary line is the Border Crime Prevention Unit, a special group composed of Border Patrol and San Diego police officers that has been patrolling the border area since 1984. But Lt. Raymond Dobbs, executive lieutenant for the San Diego Police Department’s southern division, which includes the special border unit, said it was his impression that violence, particularly attacks by gangs, had decreased along the border. He added that the unit does not track individual assaults against officers, except for shooting incidents.

“The amount of bandit activity has decreased,” said Dobbs, who attributed that fact to the enforcement team’s presence. “Just the fact that they’re there has reduced the amount of violence at the border.”

Since 1984, Dobbs said, the unit has fired shots 32 times, killing at least a dozen suspected bandits--a fact that has fueled criticism that the unit members should exercise greater caution. Three team members have also been shot, Dobbs said, but all recovered.