The search for the next chief of the Tucson Police Department has been embarrassingly botched – a situation that will unfairly cast a national pall over a highly respected department.

Middle school student council elections are more professionally handled than this debacle has been.

The city of Tucson spent months and an undisclosed amount of money – likely tens of thousands of dollars – in a national hunt for the city’s next police chief. How much was spent? The city says it doesn’t know – which doesn’t speak well of accounting procedures.

Then – after candidates had been flown to and lodged in Tucson, after extensive and costly background checks, after meetings with several community groups, after hours and hours of interviews and after the field had been narrowed to four finalists – the search was canceled.

City Manager Mike Hein, who is charged with selecting a chief, said only that a chief would not be selected from that list of finalists, which included two from within TPD and two from outside Tucson. Instead, a new search will be started including only candidates within TPD.

Hein issued a statement saying TPD employees “have demonstrated a commitment to excellence and have made the Tucson Police Department the best police department in the country.”

But that sterling reputation was known before the city launched a national search for the next chief. If Hein and the council thought so highly of TPD and wanted a chief from within the department, why go through the expense and the effort of a national search – and then call it all off when the end was within sight?

The candidates who applied from outside Tucson thought highly enough of TPD to risk endangering their careers elsewhere. Now they’ve been told – with very few specifics – to go back to their lives, it all was a big mistake and Tucson no longer is interested in anyone from outside of TPD.

Memories are long. The next time Tucson needs a chief and decides to conduct a national search, tales of this adventure will be resurrected.

Concerns also were raised that required qualifications varied on different Web sites.

That may not have been a major factor in canceling the search. But it adds to the perception that the city didn’t have a firm idea what it was looking for in a chief – one of the most high-profile positions in local government.

Kermit Miller has been acting police chief for nine months since Richard Miranda retired. Miller has done an admirable job in his temporary position, but is due to retire in May.

It is incumbent that Hein move deliberately to fill the job before Miller retires. TPD needs a new chief, not another acting chief.

There are qualified local candidates. It’s unfortunate Hein and the council didn’t recognize that before now.

Should this license plate frame lead to a $130 fine?

The point has been made: License plates must be entirely visible – including the word “Arizona.”

So it makes sense for the Legislature to now dial back a strict law that went into effect Jan. 1.

Last year, a bill passed by the Legislature allowed police to stop any vehicle with the state name even partially obscured on its license plate. Fines could be as high as $130.

Now lawmakers are considering amending that. A motorist could be cited for the plate violation only if stopped for something else. And the fine for the first violation would be only $30.

There are good reasons for having license plates totally visible. But now that people understand that, it is reasonable to make the law less punitive while still keeping it in effect.

The four Tucson police chief finalists

Within the next month, City Manager Mike Hein and members of the City Council will make a critically important decision as they select Tucson’s next police chief.

The police chief is one of a community’s most visible leaders. But the chief also is responsible for overseeing a corps of men and women entrusted with ensuring the safety of citizens. There is no more important government duty than public safety.

The search for Tucson’s next police chief has been narrowed to four men: Capt. Brett Klein and Assistant Chief John Leavitt, both of the Tucson Police Department; Assistant Chief Blake McClellan of the Phoenix Police Department; and former Chief Mark Paresi of the North Las Vegas Police Department.

If there were deep cultural or operational problems within TPD, it would be important to select an outsider to set a new direction. But that is not the case, as TPD is a nationally respected and professionally run department.

So selecting the next chief comes down to picking the best match for the department, for Tucson and for Tucsonans.

There are some obvious needs in the next chief.

He must have strong leadership skills so he earns the respect of the officers who work for him.

He must be good at communication – within the department, with the City Council, with neighborhood groups and with the countless other constituencies that interact with police.

And the next chief’s focus must be on local, street-level crime – preventing it to the extent possible and identifying and arresting wrongdoers when crimes are committed.

Several of the candidates talked about the importance of focusing on crimes involving guns, gangs or drugs. That kind of strategy is essential so repeat offenders and the worst of the worst are targeted for special attention.

Illegal immigration will be a topic of discussion for the next chief – but it will not and should not be a major focus of the department’s attention.

Certainly anyone who breaks state laws should be identified and arrested – and that undoubtedly will include some illegal immigrants. But no local law enforcement agency has the time or resources to go after people whose only crime is illegally entering the country.

Murder, sexual assault, robbery, burglary, auto theft – these are the crimes that concern most Tucsonans. And they are the crimes that should also be of paramount concern to the Tucson Police Department. To investigate those crimes, police need the trust and cooperation of all residents – including those who are in the country illegally.

The next Tucson police chief must be multifaceted and multitalented. Much will be expected of him in a high-pressure environment.

U.S. weapons are as much a part of border violence as smuggled drugs from Mexico

Soldiers stand guard during a November presentation of weapons seized during an operation against the Gulf cartel in Mexico City.

In our rush to erect walls and beef up the Border Patrol to keep people and drugs from being smuggled into the United States from Mexico, we have overlooked an equally important problem:

The vast quantities of guns smuggled from the United States into Mexico – guns largely responsible for the massive increase in violence on both sides of the border.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón recently said his police and military are dangerously outgunned as they go after powerful drug cartels. Over the past two years, about 800 law enforcement officials have been slain. And almost all of the weapons used in those murders are coming from the United States.

That allegation was supported by the U.S. State Department, which reported that guns bought or stolen in the United States were used in 95 percent of the 6,290 drug-related murders in Mexico last year and the more than 1,000 killings so far this year.

This is not a Second Amendment issue, which protects the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms. The U.S. should aggressively enforce current gun laws to keep weapons in the hands of law-abiding Americans.

The United States and Mexico are the closest of friends – but in some ways, we also are the worst of enemies.

Mexico is the leading source of drugs brought into the United States, and Americans are eager customers. And it is American drug users who finance the cartels, which are becoming so violent they pose a real security threat to the United States.

Last December, top officials in the Bush administration pledged that the U.S. would supply more money, training and equipment to help Mexico crack down on drugs.

That hasn’t worked. Instead, the Obama administration should follow through on promises by Attorney General Eric Holder to enforce a long-ignored ban on importing assault-style weapons. Many are illegally resold and shipped to Mexico.

Raul Yzaguirre, executive director of the Center for Community Development and Civil Rights at Arizona State University recently wrote in the Tucson Citizen about the difficult relationship between the United States and Mexico:

“Mexico’s drug lords give law-enforcement authorities and anyone else who stands in their way a choice: ‘plomo o plata.’ Literally, lead or silver. (The lead is meant for the whole family.)

“Mexico may be supplying the drugs, but Americans are providing the lead and the silver.”

Yes, Mexico must do more to keep its drugs and people from illegally entering the United States. But we are neighbors who share a property line, and the United States has the same responsibility to keep guns from illegally entering Mexico.

Each nation must get its house in order. The safety of people on both sides of the border is at stake.

Long-term incarceration of nonviolent criminals doesn’t benefit them, society or taxpayers

Prison reform has long been seen as the province of bleeding-heart liberals who push to have fewer people locked up.

But when you hear someone say, “We have to fundamentally rethink prisons” – and that someone is conservative icon Newt Gingrich – you know times are changing.

And there is this:

“The fact that so many Americans, including hundreds of thousands who are a threat to no one, are incarcerated means that something is wrong with our criminal justice system and the way we deal with both dangerous criminals and those whose behavior we simply don’t like.”

That from David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union.

The focus of prison reform clearly has changed. Even those who may not care much about the people locked up are starting to care about the staggering sums of money we’re spending on prisons.

And that’s an especially timely topic as Arizona and every other state struggle with epic budget deficits.

The Pew Center on the States recently completed a comprehensive study of how much this nation spends to punish people.

Its report “The Long Reach of American Corrections” found that 1 in 31 Americans is behind bars, on parole or on probation. Most important, it found that if states find ways to divert offenders to community supervision programs, costs can be slashed dramatically – without increasing danger to the public.

The math is simple: It costs $79 per day to keep a person in prison. It costs only $7.47 per day to keep a person on parole and $3.42 per day for a person on probation.

If it works and is as effective or more so at keeping citizens safe, why not try it?

Last year, Arizona spent $951 million running prisons. That will top $1 billion this year or next – a figure that works out to more than $114,000 per hour, every day of the year.

Arizona spends $9.50 of every $100 in its General Fund on prison – more than every state except Florida and Oregon. That makes less money available for schools, parks, health care, roads and all other state programs.

What can be done to reduce the bill? Basically, put fewer people in prisons for shorter periods of time. It can be done, and it works. New York has shown the way.

The Pew report found that between 1997 and 2007, New York experienced the greatest decrease in violent crime and the greatest decrease in prison population of any state.

Obviously there are violent people who must be sent to prison and kept there for a long time.

“But our research shows that prisons are housing too many people who can be managed safely and held accountable to the community at a far lower cost,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center’s Public Safety Performance Project.

There are proven ways of evaluating wrongdoers and determining whether they really need to be locked up, Gelb said.

And it’s not only who is locked up, but for how long. The average incarceration time served in the United States is about 30 months, Gelb said. The cost to taxpayers for the first month is the same as that for the last month. Yet “the deterrent impact starts dropping on Day 2,” he said in an interview.

“There really isn’t any evidence that letting someone out after 32 months instead of 35 months will spark a crime wave,” he said. Those additional months – at a cost of $2,400 per month per inmate – are “a substantial public cost without any public benefit.”

There is encouraging news in Arizona. Last year, the Legislature passed and the governor signed a law that gives offenders the same thing college coaches have: performance incentives.

The Safe Communities Act gives probationers an incentive to comply with conditions of their supervision. For every month they do so, probation time is cut by 20 days. Screw up, and the earned time is lost.

County probation departments also have incentives. Counties that reduce probation revocations are given 40 percent of the money the state saves by not having to imprison the inmates.

If all counties reduce revocations by 10 percent, the state could save $10 million, with $4 million returned to counties.

Gelb called the law “very exciting stuff” and “a very smart and courageous step.”

But backward steps already are being taken. Hammered by budget problems, the Legislature has cut funding for probation. Pima County alone will lay off 22 probation employees April 1 with another 33 vacant positions eliminated. Other counties face similar cuts.

Short-term savings, but the effect will likely be a jump in prison inmates. We haven’t yet learned.

Mark Kimble appears at 6:30 p.m. Fridays on the Roundtable segment of “Arizona Illustrated” on KUAT-TV, Channel 6. At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, he’ll be on KUAT, commenting on the impending closure of the Tucson Citizen. He may be reached at 573-4662 or mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com.

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PAROLE, PROBATION

• Parole: Offenders who have spent time in prison and are released to complete the remainder of their sentence in the community. Intended to smooth a prisoner’s transition back to society.

• Probation: Instead of going to prison, low-level offenders are allowed to remain in the community as long as they exhibit good behavior and meet other conditions while supervised by a probation officer.

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CORRECTIONS SPENDING

Corrections spending as a percentage of state General Fund spending:

Top five*

Oregon 10.6%

Florida 10.0%

Arizona 9.5%

Vermont 9.4%

Montana 8.6%

Bottom five

Massachusetts 4.6%

New Mexico 4.6%

Connecticut 4.3%

Hawaii 4.3%

Alabama 2.5%

* Michigan spends 22% of its general fund on corrections, but the figure is not comparable because education is not included in the general fund, as it is in other states.

At the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives offices in Phoenix, Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the ATF, last year shows some of the large-caliber bullets that are sought by Mexican drug cartels.

The number of U.S. residents here illegally has declined, a rare occurrence that the Department of Homeland Security links to rising unemployment and more rigorous border enforcement.

But another factor that may be deterring immigration is the fact that border violence is up – way up – with drug cartels engaging in rapes, murders, kidnappings and gunbattles virtually in our backyard.

Indeed, Phoenix is now second only to Mexico City for kidnappings with ransom.

Last year, Phoenix reported 3,664 abductions, most linked with Mexican human smugglers and narcotics gangs, USA TODAY reports.

And Pima and Cochise counties have seen more and more “rape trees,” where women migrants are raped and their clothes hung on display.

State Sen. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson, is proposing legislation to make harboring an illegal immigrant a felony and to prosecute those who help smugglers, among other changes.

The most effective response to these crimes, however, will hinge on the coordination of local, state and federal law enforcement, as encouraged by Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Better yet would be cooperation and coordination with officials in Sonora, Mexico, as well.

As Paton noted in a news release, “Hundreds of people are being kidnapped, raped and killed. Body parts are cut off if ransoms aren’t paid fast enough. Drug cartel members are being assassinated in our own state.”

In addition, the firepower employed by the drug cartels is horrifying.

Goddard showed a .50-caliber rifle to legislators this week, noting, “Those bullets pierce armor. They will go through armor, and they will go through tanks.”

As southern Arizona morphs into a battleground for dueling drug cartels, the Attorney General’s Office must do everything conceivable to coordinate law enforcement responses and keep our citizens safe.

Last year, the state’s Operation Tumbleweed led to 59 arrests and broke up a ring suspected of smuggling 400,000 pounds of marijuana a year, for several years, into the U.S.

We hope more such operations can be waged and completed to deter not only marijuana smugglers, but also those dealing in worse drugs and those who smuggle human beings.

We wish innocent illegal immigrants would refrain from crossing the border – especially while this violence is raging.

And we hope Arizonans and Sonorans alike can look forward to expanded binational law enforcement efforts to keep us all safe.

This escalating border violence must be quelled, the sooner the better.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

The Arizona Latino Legislative Caucus is urging President Obama’s administration to review Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s operation – and rightly so.

Concerns about racial profiling and other abuses of people’s civil rights have surfaced since Arpaio began raiding Hispanic neighborhoods over the past two years.

His recent decision to segregate illegal immigrants in county jails also raises questions, as all inmates are to be treated under the same standards.

The Departments of Justice and of Homeland Security were asked last week to review the situation, in a request by U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. and three other House Judiciary Committee Democrats.

We hope a federal review in Maricopa will be forthcoming. The notion that people with brown skin are treated differently is not acceptable in Arizona or anywhere else.

Sex crimes are among the most abhorrent. They can shatter security, damage trust and invade a victim’s core being. Rapists and pedophiles deserve tough sentences and treatment. If that doesn’t reform them, they should be kept away from society.

It’s unfortunate, then, that, in their quest to crack down on sex offenses, prosecutors and legislators are going off on pointless tangents that risk trivializing them.

Ask the young man who was a 17-year-old Sioux City, Iowa, high school student last year when he shot a racy 10-second video of himself and a girlfriend on his cell phone. At age 18, he texted it to a friend. Evidently he had his pants down, making visible his private parts.

It was a careless, immature thing to do – though maybe not so surprising in a culture that seems to prolong adolescence and encourages everyone to broadcast their most private thoughts and actions. But it’s doubtful the kid thought he’d be prosecuted for a sex crime.

Charged, as an adult, with telephone dissemination of obscene material to a minor (the friend was 17), he was looking at two years in jail and 10 years on the sex-offender registry, if convicted. That would have barred him, as he set off for college, from living in any public Iowa college dorm.

That’s absurd. In effect, laws intended to prevent adults from preying sexually on children are now being used to prosecute the kids themselves.

The practice of “sexting” – youth texting revealing pictures of themselves – is increasingly being prosecuted as child pornography or other felonies, the Associated Press reported, with cases in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Mischievous teen behavior is criminalized, youth are forever stigmatized, and the meaning of sex crimes is diminished.

The Iowa kid was lucky. He got to take a plea bargain, sparing him the draconian consequences of being branded a sex offender. But not before his family had spent $50,000 defending him.

One person who’s outraged is David Coster, a Grinnell, Iowa, surgeon. He’s been contacting lawmakers to persuade them to change the law. Exploring burgeoning sexuality, says Coster, is an inherent part of teen development: “To now criminalize it is one of the most frightening things I’ve ever heard.”

Weren’t those making these decisions ever kids themselves? Did they ever show a Playboy to a friend?

Of course lurid pictures shouldn’t be sent to unsuspecting young people who don’t welcome them. But surely that can be handled with more appropriate discipline.

The overreaction isn’t limited to sexting and teens. Iowa’s sex-offender residency law also doesn’t differentiate between pedophiles and pranksters in forbidding registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools or child-care centers.

Even advocates for sexual-assault victims have opposed it for its unintended consequences. One Iowa man on the registry was 19 when he exposed himself at a party in the presence of a 13-year-old, among others. A decade later, though he had completed his sentence and probation, married and had kids, the law forced him to live an hour from his job.

It’s time for lawmakers, prosecutors and courts to take a deep breath and seriously consider where they’re headed here. Criminalizing youthful indiscretions and forcing ex-convicts into homelessness isn’t going to make society safer.

Let’s return to common sense, weigh each case separately and save the harshest provisions for the most hopeless, egregious offenders.

Rekha Basu is an editorial columnist for the Des Moines Register. E-mail: rbasu@dmreg.com.

Arizona shouldn’t shackle itself to new interim Department of Corrections chief

Arizona’s new interim prisons chief likes chain gangs and was top deputy to a state corrections director associated with Abu Ghraib and crimes against women inmates.

So, no, Charles L. Ryan isn’t exactly Dora Schriro.

Schriro, the first woman to head Arizona’s Department of Corrections, has left the state to work for Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano, our former governor.

Like anyone running prisons, Schriro has detractors. But her focus on inmate rehabilitation and common-sense approach to management and reforms won her acclaim and reduced assaults and recidivism.

In choosing Ryan to replace her, for the nonce anyway, new Gov. Jan Brewer has – unwittingly, one hopes – unleashed panic among human rights devotees and other observers.

The American Friends Service Committee, for example, already has formally opposed Ryan’s appointment.

Could his arrival herald the return of Terry Stewart? That’s the fear, and Brewer so far has done nothing to dispel it.

Stewart’s tenure as DOC director was wracked by violence and controversy.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued him in 1997 after an 18-month investigation, charging that at least 14 women prisoners were repeatedly raped, sodomized and otherwise sexually assaulted and observed by corrections workers as they dressed, showered and used the bathroom.

Prison officials refused to let investigators talk with staff and inmates about the complaints, the suit said.

Despite a report finding “an unconstitutional pattern of practice of sexual misconduct,” the lawsuit was dropped after Arizona agreed to more stringently oversee employees who work with female inmates.

In another case, a corrections officer was stabbed to death March 7, 1997, in the San Juan Unit of the Perryville prison in Goodyear.

But while such cases were to have spurred major reforms, later events showed that Stewart never implemented the fixes ordered.

Stewart did accelerate privatization of state prisons, which has increased costs while reducing state control. And he pushed unsuccessfully to build a prison exclusively for Mexican nationals, to be run by a private firm.

Stewart resigned from the Department of Corrections in November 2002 after nearly seven years, but he soon was back in the spotlight.

In 2003, he was tapped by the State Department to oversee development of prisons in Iraq.

By 2004, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was asking the Department of Justice to investigate Stewart’s involvement in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, citing his “shocking record of tolerating prisoner abuse” in Arizona.

Back in Arizona, on Jan. 18, 2004, two felons overpowered an officer at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis. One donned the officer’s uniform, bluffed his way into the tower and took two hostages, the start of a 15-day siege that led to charges of sexual assault and kidnapping by inmates.

Although Stewart was long gone by then, he called top Senate Republicans – including now Senate President Bob Burns – to “express concerns.”

But an ensuing investigation showed that Stewart never had implemented reforms ordered years earlier to make state prisons safer.

“I apologized to the director (Schriro) for the agency she inherited,” longtime Deputy Director Gary Phelps testified in a hearing at the time.

By all indications, interim Director Ryan now takes control of a greatly improved prison system.

If Arizona is to maintain and perhaps even accelerate those enhancements, Stewart cannot be brought back to the helm.

And Ryan should be allowed to serve only temporarily, until a professional director is found.

In the 2002 book “History, Memory, and the Law” by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns, Ryan goes on at great length to defend use of chain gangs, insisting modern restraints are so gentle, “you could walk around like that all day long.”

“For the Department of Corrections,” the authors note, “the simple desire to get lazy troublemakers to work necessitates the amiable bondage of chain.”

Besides serving as Stewart’s right-hand man in Arizona, Ryan also worked in Iraq in 2004 as the Coalition Provisional Authority’s deputy prisons director.

Neither U.S. prisons established in Iraq nor the Arizona prisons system under Stewart and Ryan are anything to brag about.

If Brewer wants to keep Arizona prisons fairly functional, she needs to tap a good leader for the Department of Corrections. And that most assuredly excludes Ryan and Stewart.

Reach Billie Stanton at bstanton@tucsoncitizen.com and 573-4664 (or billiestanton@gmail.com).

A tunnel found Monday night on the Arizona-Mexico border near downtown Nogales was the ninth such excavation detected in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector since October.

The tunnels are a vivid reminder that it’s futile to depend on a border wall to stop illegal immigration.

But the fact that the new tunnel was found by technology does underscore the importance of investing in more high-tech means to secure our border.

Since fiscal 2003, 34 tunnels have been found in the Tucson sector.

Two other tunnels beneath Nogales were found Thanksgiving week.

Many of the tunnels have been elaborate enough to accommodate not only the trafficking of guns and money, but also of illegal immigrants.

We hope more high-tech means will be deployed to detect and dismantle these secret passageways into the U.S.

Gov. Janet Napolitano’s parting gifts to Arizona include reforms to prevent racial profiling by the Department of Public Safety.

She appointed nine Arizonans to review traffic stops and racial profiling as part of a 2003 court settlement.

Their recommendations, released Tuesday after 19 months of work, should go a long way toward protecting not only the privacy rights of motorists, but also the professional conduct of DPS officers.

Officers now must get a driver’s consent before searching a vehicle – by signature, an audiotape or on video.

The officer also must complete a form enumerating what factors raised suspicion about the vehicle.

If a driver won’t consent to a search, the officer can try to get a warrant. But that requires probable cause, a higher standard than reasonable suspicion.

The American Civil Liberties Union had filed a class-action lawsuit after citizens alleged that DPS officers were stopping Hispanic drivers at a higher rate than white motorists.

Indeed, DPS data from 2006 and 2007 showed that Hispanic drivers were much more likely to be ticketed and less likely to receive warnings for infractions.

Hispanics, Native Americans and black drivers also were “significantly more likely” to be arrested and searched, says a November report.

Whether race was the motivation wasn’t proven, but the data certainly suggest a propensity for targeting minorities – whether consciously or subconsciously.

Arizona is a major conduit for narcotics, guns and illegal immigrants brought north out of Mexico, so DPS officers have plenty of interaction with criminals from Mexico.

Arizona also is a heavily Hispanic state, however, with many residents who have been here for multiple generations, long before whites ever arrived in this country.

So while our state desperately needs rigorous law enforcement to curtail illegal trafficking, we also must have state officers who are mindful of Arizona’s rich ethnic diversity.

We depend on DPS officers to exercise good judgment, sans preconceived notions toward any group.

Sound, dispassionate, professional law enforcement is essential to any society, but it is particularly important in Arizona, which bears the brunt of more border-related crime than any other state.

We appreciate the work by the Citizens Traffic Stop Advisory Board, its use of experts from the University of Cincinnati Policing Institute and its recommended reforms, some of which DPS already has instituted.

We appreciate our DPS officers, too. And we’re glad the new practices will protect them from any suspicions of wrongdoing.

A new memorial to slain Tucson police Officer Erik Hite is being created on the Northeast Side, thanks to neighborhood activist Lori Oien and Boy Scout Kyle Kadous, who holds the type of paver donors can have engraved.

For a quarter of a century – more than half his lifetime – Erik Hite tried to protect us. He died trying.

Now Hite’s legacy is not only commanding more appreciation of law enforcement, but also is helping an aspiring Eagle Scout get his wings.

Hite served 21 years in the U.S. Air Force, then four more with the Tucson Police Department.

He was only 43 when he was gunned down in the line of duty June 1, while braving gunfire as he chased a suspect across the northern tier of Tucson. Hite died the next day.

A makeshift memorial has stood ever since at the spot where he was sabotaged.

Soon a permanent remembrance will be created nearby, thanks chiefly to neighborhood activist Lori Oien and Boy Scout Kyle Kadous, son of Tucson police Sgt. Anthony Kadous.

The cool retreat, shaded by mesquite trees, will feature a drinking fountain, equipped with a special nozzle for people in wheelchairs and will also have a doggy dish below.

Hite’s face will be etched in black granite donated by the local Granite Planet, and donors are paying $25 each to have messages engraved in pavers, donated by The Home Depot on East Broadway.

Tucsonans can only hope this site someday will bring solace to Hite’s widow, Nohemy; their 1 1/2-year-old daughter, Samantha; adult son, Roy David Hite of San Antonio; and Erik Hite’s parents, Patsy and Roy Hite of Florence, Ore.

Officer Hite was attacked just north of East Tanque Verde Road on North Tomahawk Trail, where a memorial to the local hero sprang up almost instantaneously.

Police and sheriff’s cruisers still stop there, as fellow officers pay their respects.

That site is in the public right of way though, Oien says. The new memorial will be on the south side of Tanque Verde Road, in an embracing alcove of a wall for a development there.

Oien is president of the neighborhood association for Bear Canyon, the community where Hite was attacked.

More important, she is married to a law enforcement officer. Tears still fill her eyes when she remembers the day Hite was shot.

(David Nick Delich is charged with first-degree murder in Hite’s death and was charged recently with assaulting an officer in the Pima County Adult Detention Center unit for mentally ill inmates, where he is being held.)

Oien didn’t know Hite. And Kyle Kadous, 13, says he doesn’t know much about Hite; he’s helping with the memorial as his project to become an Eagle Scout.

One man who knew Hite well, alas, never knew they both were in Tucson until it was too late.

Local architect Edward C. Schaeffer Jr. served in Air Force law enforcement with Hite in the 569th U.S. Forces Police Flight in southwest Germany.

Tech Sgt. E-6 Hite, second in command on the swing shift, “did everything the way it was supposed to be done, no excuses and no exceptions,” Schaeffer recalls. “This approach doesn’t always earn you the nomination for Mr. Congeniality, but . . . his standards were high, and he led by example.

“Erik was promoted to master sergeant while I was there, and I never saw that man grin so much during a shift as he did that day.”

Not until Schaeffer heard the tragic news last June did he know that Hite, too, had landed in Tucson.

Now he is serving as architect of the memorial for his old friend – “a man who dedicated his entire professional life to public service.”

Hite’s fearless service and shocking death shook all of Tucson deeply.

A deeper respect and appreciation for law enforcement has permeated our community since his slaying.

Citizens such as Oien, Schaeffer and Kadous have been galvanized into action.

And local businesses have demonstrated laudable largess despite the sour economy.

Now Tucson will have a permanent place to commemorate Hite’s sacrifice on our behalf.

And when little Samantha becomes a big girl, she can sit beneath some mesquite in the Tanque Verde Valley and know what all of Tucson knows – that her daddy was more than a man. He was a genuine hero.

Reach Billie Stanton at 573-4664 or bstanton@tucsoncitizen.com.

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HOW TO HELP

• www.tucsonpolicefoundation.org

• E-mail Lori Oien at oienjmo@msn.com

• Or call her at 749-3472.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s resolution for 2009 is to make inmates pay for their meals – even though the jail’s food sometimes is rotten, expired or moldy.

It’s an absurd notion, but it’s also a charge the Legislature allows. Arpaio also charges inmates for medical care, and he’s going to ask legislators if he can charge inmates for their beds, too.

The jail is under a federal order to provide the constitutionally mandated level of care, including safe food.

The inmates work about 10 hours a day without pay. Their only money is what they had upon arrival or what family and friends donated to them.

If they must pay for meals, they may not have enough money for medical services, one lawyer noted.

About $900,000 a year might be saved by charging $1.25 a day for meals. Those without money would be fed but would pay if ever jailed again.

Some inmates are in on charges but unconvicted. Others have serious medical needs. And the jail is obligated to feed and treat them, money or no money. Arpaio, get real.

. . . responsible alcohol consumption does

Thanksgiving kicked off a season well known for its accompanying festivities.

Families and friends get together and chances are high that most adults will be celebrating with a beverage or two.

But just as most partygoers make it a point to look after each other at these holiday gatherings, local governments will be taking some extra precautions to keep our roads safe.

Unfortunately, these heightened traffic safety programs fall short of expectations year after year.

Alcohol-related fatalities have been reduced by more than 30 percent since 1982 – no thanks to one of the most popular traffic programs in the last decade (during which fatality numbers have completely leveled off).

It is a policy which all but 11 states still cling to despite its obvious reliance on emotion instead of effectiveness: sobriety checkpoints.

These roadblocks will be among the many long lines that thousands of Arizonans will find themselves waiting in this holiday season. But buried among the news stories about holiday shopping and the economy, plenty of articles will appear in local newspapers under headlines like this: “No drunk drivers caught at sobriety checkpoint.”

Such headlines appeared in newspapers across the country last holiday season. Countless counties also stopped hundreds of vehicles and made only one or two arrests.

Since these checkpoints are highly visible by design and publicized in advance, it’s almost surprising that they manage to make any arrests at all.

How can placing a group of officers at a single location and waiting for drunk drivers to come to them be the best approach to traffic safety improvement?

The allegiance to these programs by so many state governments can’t be explained by a lack of better options. Roving police patrols, or saturation patrols, are clearly more effective. They arrest up to 10 times as many drunk drivers as checkpoints by patrolling the highways and looking for dangerous drivers.

The problem with roadblocks is that they are far too easily avoided by the base of what’s left of America’s drunk driving problem: hard-core alcohol abusers.

National data consistently show that the average drunk driver involved in a fatal crash had a blood alcohol concentration of more than twice the legal limit. These are chronic drunk drivers, not someone who has had a glass of wine, or two, with Thanksgiving dinner.

Policymakers had good reason to give these checkpoint programs a chance. But the reality is that checkpoints aren’t further shrinking the much-diminished drunk driving problem.

With the growing financial challenges our country is now facing, why should we funnel limited resources away from measures that are proven to achieve the same goal more effectively?

With a dozen or more officers, special equipment and printed materials, roadblocks cost taxpayers a whopping average of about $8,000 each. A typical saturation patrol with two officers runs about $300.

Proponents are going to be working harder to justify the lack of return on these substantial investments of taxpayer money. But try not to be distracted by their emotional appeals. Checkpoint advocates, led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, have a lot more in mind for these roadblocks than traffic safety.

MADD defends checkpoint programs so aggressively because it is dedicated to minimizing alcohol consumption, not simply ensuring it is consumed responsibly. This is why the group has publicly advocated putting ignition interlocks (in-car breath analysis devices) in every car as a safety feature, like seat belts.

Over the next several weeks, MADD’s campaigns will be dedicated to making sure that Americans feel sufficiently guilty about consuming any spiked eggnog whatsoever prior to driving.

No one is against taking extra steps to make the roads safer during the holidays. But there is little evidence to suggest that checkpoints are the smartest way to do that.

Now more than ever, it is important to make sure our resources are being spent effectively at the national and local level. It is difficult to exercise fiscal responsibility in the emotionally charged atmosphere that MADD and other anti-alcohol advocates have cultivated.

Be safe on the roads this holiday season – and always. But remember that the coming weeks are especially appropriate for re-examining our most misguided alcohol policies.

Prohibition was repealed 75 years ago on Dec. 5, reinstating the freedom of Americans to enjoy the beverage of their choice. Just in time for those holiday festivities.

Sarah Longwell is the managing director of the American Beverage Institute in Washington, D.C., an association of restaurants committed to the responsible serving of adult beverages.

The victim: Mia Janelle Henderson

There can be no feeling of satisfaction in the tragic case of two Navajo students at the University of Arizona.

Galareka Harrison, 19, was sentenced this week to spend the rest of her life in prison without the possibility of parole. She was convicted of murdering her UA roommate, 18-year-old Mia Janelle Henderson, last year.

It was a horrible outcome to two stories of promise. The girls didn’t know each other before coming to UA. Both grew up on the Navajo Nation, both were outstanding students and both were determined to use their education to benefit their people.

Now two families who were proud of their daughters are left in ruins.

Henderson’s family asked for the life-without-parole term, and Superior Court Judge Nanette Warner agreed. But there is no closure in such a painful case. Our thoughts are with the families of both young women.

The killer: Galareka Harrison