{"id":25554,"date":"2024-09-27T12:27:33","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T18:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-police-chief-knuckles-gets-deployed\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:20:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:20:05","slug":"cortez-police-chief-knuckles-gets-deployed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-police-chief-knuckles-gets-deployed\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez Police Chief Knuckles gets deployed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cortez
Cortez Police Chief Vernon Knuckles. (Image from city website)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

In October, Police Chief Vernon Knuckles will be deployed to serve in Arizona with the National Guard for roughly a year.<\/p>\n

During that time, Assistant Chief Andy Brock will take his place. When Knuckles is back in town, he\u2019ll regain his title as police chief.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019ll do a really great job,\u201d Knuckles said.<\/p>\n

Brock served as interim chief before Knuckles got the job a few years ago, He\u2019s been a lieutenant too, in addition to his experience as assistant chief.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to be a long ways away, so I\u2019m going to stay engaged as much as I can remotely, but Andy will pretty much be the day-to-day operations,\u201d Knuckles said.<\/p>\n

Knuckles, his 27-year-old son and a lot of others in the Guard are going to Arizona to support U.S. Border Patrol, which is understaffed, Knuckles said.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll do administrative duties, like data entry and watching cameras to try and detect people that are coming through the desert, Knuckles said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of us going down and augmenting them is to relieve the Border Patrol agents that are in those positions so they can go and do enforcement. Our mission will have nothing to do with law enforcement, it\u2019s strictly administrative,\u201d Knuckles said.<\/p>\n

The overall mission they\u2019re supporting spans from California to Texas and has been going on for at least a decade, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got deployed, people were like, \u2018Oh, you know, it\u2019s because of the election, you know \u2026 the current administration is trying to show they\u2019re doing something,\u2019\u201d said Knuckles. \u201cThe fact is, the Border Patrol is understaffed \u2026 there\u2019s no political spin to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knuckles first signed up with Utah\u2019s National Guard back in 1985 after getting recruited at Monticello High School.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been in the National Guard for a long time, and when you serve in the Guard, there is that possibility that you can get deployed, and that happened,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s my second deployment. I went to Iraq in \u201903 with the Guard.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t his first deployment, but he said it will be his last. When he\u2019s back in February 2026, he plans to retire from it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assistant Chief Andy Brock will fill in while he\u2019s away<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29,51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78990,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25554\/revisions\/78990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25554"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}