The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors held its first meeting of 2026 on Jan. 7 and unanimously appointed Supervisor Brooks Compton [R-District 1] from vice to be the chairman and Nikki Check [D-District 3] as vice chairwoman for the 2026 calendar year.
“For the past year, I’ve had the honor of working very closely with one of my fellow supervisors on many, many issues,” Compton said. “We’ve become good working partners, somebody who I respect and I think will help lead the county, and help me lead the county that somebody is works hard and diligently, non stop, like all of us do. And with that, I’d like to … nominate supervisor Nikki Check to be vice chair.”
Check represents Cottonwood, Sedona, Clarkdale, Jerome and parts of Cornville. Compton represents Prescott and southwest Yavapai County.
Training
The board accepted a $600,000 appropriation from the Peace Officer Training Equipment Fund from House Bill 2897 to create new firearms training scenarios for the VirTra, Inc system that deputies use to practice shoot/don’t shoot decision-making using a 360-degree video screen.
A workshop will be held with the Arizona Sheriffs Association to identify the critical and common scenarios, with a focus on rural enforcement. The training will be shared with other police agencies.
Sex Sting Unit
The board unanimously accepted $314,395 “to cover personnel costs to reduce human trafficking,” from the Arizona Department of Public Safety for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office to continue sting operations targeting individuals seeking to purchase sex online.
“[The] FBI did a sting up here in Yavapai County,” three or four years ago, Sheriff David Rhodes [R] said. “The overwhelming number of people that were responding to the ads to purchase teenage girls, primarily for sex, here in Yavapai County blew me away. It was a strong indicator that we had a problem here in the county that needed to be addressed. So we began working with the Arizona legislature to get an appropriation [for] the Anti Human Trafficking Fund.”
The Anti-Human Trafficking Unit, staffed by Detectives Chris Wilson and Samuel Contreras was formed in August 2023 and is “tasked with driving down demand for and assisting the victims of sex trafficking,” YCSO stated in a press release.
“We got money, hired detectives, started doing cases.” Rhodes said. “I don’t have the stats right in front of me, but when I quoted them earlier in 2025 they had done over 40 cases and 20 arrests of people who were attempting to buy teenage girls for sex here in Yavapai County. We got to keep this work going. It’s all about the partnerships and the collaboration, and the special revenue to be the deterrent effect and be the leader in this space here in Yavapai County.”
No victims of actual trafficking were reported by Rhodes — the victims in the sting operations are law enforcement personnel pretending online to be underage victims.
YCSO officials estimated there were 30 to 50 sex-trafficking victims in the county in August 2023 — citing an unnamed Chandler Police Department undercover detective — who reportedly worked with YCSO and the Prescott Police Department. However, YCSO has not responded to a previous request for numbers of actual sex trafficking victims that have been recovered by YCSO.
Lobbying
The board unanimously approved a one-year, $90,000 lobbying contract with three optional one-year extensions with MCF Strategies, operated by Maria Cristina Fuentes, to lobby state lawmakers on behalf of YCSO for additional appropriations.
“I currently am sitting on the family advocacy center board here in Yavapai County, and it’d be a great use of my time to partner with [YCSO] to bring more dollars and more investment into this county so you can keep doing this great work that you’ve been doing all this time,” Fuentes said.
Fuentes replaced Megan Fitzgerald, of Fitzgerald Strategies LLC. The board approved the termination of Fitzgerald’s contract during the meeting as a consent item effective Dec. 10, with Rhodes stating “due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, [Fitzgerald] was unable to continue.”
The board approved Fitzgerald’s contract in February for $144,000 for public affairs and government relations. Rhodes said he decided to eliminate the public affairs duties which reduced the cost.
Rhodes said Fitzgerald’s contract delivered about $6.5 million in state appropriations already approved.
“There’s another about $9 million on the agenda today, after this item,” and approximately $2 million from the local border security fund.
“That money is being used to do everything from refurbish the radio system for the deputies in the county, satellite communications for the deputies in the rural areas, the positions that are in your special Crimes Unit, which is the proactive unit that we’re able to surge resources into different areas of the county for law enforcement issues, our reentry program at the county jail,” Rhodes said.
Most of those items were accepted by the county from the state during its Nov. 5 meeting when it also accepted $2 million in seed money to potentially construct a future Criminal Information Intelligence Analysis Coordination Center for YCSO.
A $4,000 donation from Mark and Diane Bailey to help fund YCSO’s K-9 Unit was accepted by the board as well.
