CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — County officials have confirmed with 3NEWS that the Nueces County District Attorney's Criminal Interdiction Unit is being disbanded.
The department, led by Mike Tamez, is known for combating drug trafficking in our part of South Texas. Tamez and another employee have both been let go.
3NEWS was informed of the decision to disband the department by the new District Attorney James "Jimmy" Granberry, who was appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott to take over after the former District Attorney Mark Gonzalez resigned.
The announcement comes during Red Ribbon Week, a time to help keep kids drug free. Reactions rolled in Monday night, serving as a shock for a lot of residents in the community who noted the success of the program over the last five years.
"You can't argue with the stats, you can call me whatever you want, say you guys are getting rid of us because you don't want us, that's fine I'm not mad at any of that. What I'm concerned with, we were the only ones raiding drug houses," Tamez said.
Granberry said that he believes the DA's office should not have a police department.
"I've always viewed a DA'S office as a professional attorneys office, state bar rules of behavior, brought up living those rules, to find out we had our own police department within the DA's office was a bit of a surprise," Granberry said.
The unit is made of several agencies, along with Robstown and Bishop police departments. The unit patrolled Highway 77, a drug corridor known for drug trafficking and cartel activity. Seizing hundreds of pounds of various drugs, fire arms and almost $2 million in cash.
Many of those cases were featured on 3NEWS which included raids on known drug houses, and game rooms.
The unit even a record setting liquid fentynal bust late last year at a traffic stop south of Robstown, which was the largest bust of its kind in the U.S. at the time.
"No agency around here that can compare to those stats in this county, there just isn't, the amount of work these officers have done, the sleepless nights, nights getting called out, they do it for one reason to keep this county safe," Tamez said.
Granberry said that he felt there was no immediate need for the unit with the presence of existing law enforcement agencies.
"At this time it didn't make any sense for this office to continue in street interdiction efforts when we've got the sheriffs office, great police department lots of constables offices," Granberry said.
Tamez said that he feels things were not handled with full transparency.
"There were a lot of things that were very very backdoorish," Tamez said. "There was discussions that bled their way out of the sheriff's office to me about a conversation between the district attorney and the sheriff about dissolving the criminal interdiction unit."
3NEWS reached out to Nueces County Sheriff J.C. Hooper, who said he would not be commenting on the matter. Tamez said that he will be spending some time with his family and focusing on his campaign for sheriff. He also said there is interest from other agencies in the area to continue to the unit of their own.
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