CRIT police add new officer after academy training in Parker area

A new badge on the Colorado River Indian Tribes Police Department is more than a routine hire in Parker. Trevor Butler-Smith’s addition gives the small agency another trained officer for a reservation that stretches about 50 miles long, reaches into California, and serves Native Americans and non-Indians across the Parker area and surrounding rural stretches of La Paz County.

Butler-Smith was sworn in at the Tribal Courthouse by Judge Raymond Dodge during a June 1 ceremony attended by CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores, Chief of Police Cody Paddock, and the officer’s family. He arrived after graduating from the Arizona Western College Law Enforcement Training Academy, where he completed a five-month law-enforcement program before joining the department.

For a department responsible for such a wide jurisdiction, the hire has real operational weight. CRIT says its reservation is about 20 miles wide at its widest point, and the agency is currently seeking applicants on its patrol officer page. Directory listings place the department at 11 officers serving 9,201 people, a staffing level that makes every additional officer matter when calls come in for patrol, traffic enforcement, emergency response, and day-to-day neighborhood coverage. One more trained officer can mean another unit available for the Parker corridor, quicker backup when incidents spread across the reservation, and more room to maintain a visible presence in a community that depends on trust as much as enforcement.

The hire also fits a broader staffing pattern inside CRIT government, which operates more than three dozen departments under a nine-member Tribal Council led by a chairman and vice-chairman elected to four-year terms. A 2007 CRIT release about a new police chief said his first goal was to add more officers and increase proactive policing, a sign that recruitment has remained a lasting concern rather than a short-term push. Butler-Smith’s swearing-in shows that the pipeline is still producing officers, but it also underlines how carefully the department has to balance recruitment, retention, and the public-safety demands of a reservation that crosses county and state lines.