Court: Wildlife officers may enter private property without cause

[kellory]

IFISHANDHUNT,...you said: " I am torn on the issue. I have nothing to hide and try do do all things by the book. But I think when you pay taxes and have a right to privacy, there should be limits for an officer to roam around your property. Unfortunately not all laws are good or smart laws. Not to mention, he is risking running into a fiesty land owner that shoots first and asks questions later. He is also risking his life if I happened to shoot at a deer the same time he peaks his head over the hill I just shot toward." IMO, If he COULD be shot because you shot over a hilltop at a skylined deer , I WOULD hold you completely responsable for his injury or death. I will let ANY animal go before I shoot where I can not see. If the shot you take is safe, then he is at no real risk.

[jonny5buck]

Possible, but not likely. It is more likely they are pot growers come out to check their bobby trapped pot fields. Or just to give the ilegal mexicans more guns and exspolsives to guard their crop. Or they are just installing a meth lab in a remote location( there have been several found by hunters just like us.) usually in deer blinds and duck blinds. They do not require much room.) My senerio is much more likely than yours. He has a job to do, and it will annoy the law abiding, and really annoy the guilty.

I beg to differ,not only do you sound like a cpo who is biased in your response but to assume someone enjoying there property has a meth lab and couldnt possibly be breaking no laws is beyond a dumbfounding response....maybe you couldnt see knocking the boots with your ol lady [if you have one] in the woods ,but i have several times- ...on land i own..no meth lab ,nothing illegal.....your intitled to you opinion but to say everyone is up to no good is an ignorant response..

The racist comment about illegal mexicans shows some more of your true colors...i suppose all mexicans are here illegaly...? right??
I have worked in the worst neighborhoods on the south side of chicago for most of my life,,and talked to people of all colors and all walks of life...i lived in the gang land of the east side of aurora,illinois for 7yrs which is 90% hispanic....the only thing that ever pisses me off is the racist no-it alls....seen one of them ...you have seen them all...

[kellory]

. I am no CPO, but half of my family are cops. I hear horror stories all the time, unfortunately they are real. I spent 5 years in California, and I have seen first hand what illegal immigration does. That is not racial, that is experience. I know and like Mexicans that play by the rules and are here legally. And the facts are, most guards for illegal crops ARE Mexican with no legal right to be here. Once again, it is those who believe the rules do not pertain to them who are the problem. As for quality time in my truck with the wife....it has been known to happen. Don't make the assumption, I'm a racist because I know a few facts you don't like. I don't like them either. I'm what you might call a Heinz 57. I'm part Indian, part Scot, part German I think, and American full through. We have Germans, french, and Italian married into the family now, and I have a foster brother in China. My kids are the only whites on their sports teams, I have blacks, Mexicans and Asians in my house, and on my computer more days than not, and you want to call me a racist? I have a problem with lawbreakers, YOU made it about RACE

[jonny5buck]

. I am no CPO, but half of my family are cops. I hear horror stories all the time, unfortunately they are real. I spent 5 years in California, and I have seen first hand what illegal immigration does. That is not racial, that is experience. I know and like Mexicans that play by the rules and are here legally. And the facts are, most guards for illegal crops ARE Mexican with no legal right to be here. Once again, it is those who believe the rules do not pertain to them who are the problem. As for quality time in my truck with the wife....it has been known to happen. Don't make the assumption, I'm a racist because I know a few facts you don't like. I don't like them either. I'm what you might call a Heinz 57. I'm part Indian, part Scot, part German I think, and American full through. We have Germans, french, and Italian married into the family now, and I have a foster brother in China. My kids are the only whites on their sports teams, I have blacks, Mexicans and Asians in my house, and on my computer more days than not, and you want to call me a racist? I have a problem with lawbreakers, YOU made it about RACE

Well il take you for you word that your not racist,and say publicly that i am sorry for labeling you as one if your not---Sorry on that point only.I stand by the rest of my post 100%...i am refering to a general scenario that could apply to to several sates...it appears your comment seems to be more from personal experience and more specific than general....i fully understand the problem with illegal immigration but thats a whole other topic......The senario with the girls actually happened in Central Wisconsin...so its not even '''probable'' it actually happened...Most cpo's i have run into have been straight forward and straight up...i talk yrly with the Game warden at Shabbona Stae park in Illinois...nice guy,and a hunter also...actually i have never had a ''bad experience '' with a Conservation Officer ..EVER... but i felt my buddy's rage at what happened in Wisconsin....his daughter was tramatized ...and doesnt enjoy camping at all......Without cause isnt even needed.!!!!.....This guy was checking hunters in the area ...,and thought the camper was full of hunters....it was deer season and thats all the law cares about...but if you step outside of yourself for a second and have kids [i have a daughter around the same age as his] it gets your blood boiling what happened.....if Cpo 's are given the Without cause''' clause it will open up more bad than good ...think about it....they can basicaly do that right now without that law on the books-Thats the truth` respectfully JON~

[kellory]

ACCEPTED, and No hard feelings Jon- Sorry to hear about your friend's troubles. Just like there are hunters stupid enough to shoot a farmer's horse or cow, there are "officers" who shouldn't be in charge of a lemonade stand. Yet it is the stupid ones we hear about. The farmers will not allow hunting, because of that 1 in 10,000 who shot a horse or a dog. I have seen horse blankets on cattle with 3foot orange letters HORSE , COW, PIG....It is the idiots who get remembered. Any chance the CPO just suffered from tunnel-vision? Fixated on the job, and didn't think? He thinks he is approaching potential lawbreakers with guns? Maybe alcohol? How many? You know cops actually get training in verbal "shock and aw"? go in hard to keep someone off balance, so they don't plan an effective defense? Perhaps he just over did it? One of the guys on this site, has the tag line" when you hear hoof beats, expect horses, not zebras." Perhaps he expected horses, and found zebras. I personally have never met a CPO this stupid or arrogant, so I lean more toward accident.

[kellory]

I followed up with a google search: One December evening in 2004,
Wildlife Officer Amy Snyder heard shots
after legal shooting hours in a popular duck-hunting area in Madison County, Tenn. She put on hip boots and set out into the marsh. But when she arrived at the blind where she thought the shooting had occurred, she found it unoccupied.



Then Officer Snyder noticed a chemical odor in the air. She shined her light around and in the grass saw a large glass mason jar filled with what looked like corn hominy. She kicked over the jar, saw rubber hoses coming out of the top and panicked.



"It was a meth lab, actively cooking," Snyder recalls. "What I'd done was extremely dangerous. The stuff could have exploded, not to mention what might have happened if I'd surprised the cookers at work."............A Rural Scourge


These incidents are not isolated. Law enforcement and conservation officials we contacted across the country describe a wave of methamphetamine manufacturing activity that has crashed across the rural countryside in the last five years, causing a dramatic change in the way game wardens operate and in the way hunters, anglers and other recreationists should conduct themselves afield.........This super-meth took off in Hawaii and Southern California first, manufactured by Mexican drug cartels. But soon the drug was being manufactured by mom-and-pop cookers, and within 20 years it spread eastward thugh the Rocky Mountains, into the Midwest and onto the East Coast. An urban phenomenon at first, it turned rural as the rank odors associated with its production caused cookers to set up in less
populated areas to avoid detection. That practice has placed some meth labs in the same woods and waterways as hunters, anglers and other outdoorsmen......



Consider that in 2003 the greatest number of reported meth lab seizures on Department of Interior lands occurred on those managed by the Fish & Wildlife Service (38 laboratories), followed by the Bureau of Land Management (31
laboratories), National Park Service (8 laboratories) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (6 laboratories). That same year, the National Forest Service discovered 56 working labs on its land.




Hunters and Meth


But those numbers are believed to be only a fraction of the activity on federal land, not to mention state and private property. And anecdotal evidence of meth invading the outdoors is easy to come by.



In November 2004, for example, deer hunters on state land near Reelsville, Ind., came upon a duffel bag containing an actively cooking meth lab. They wisely backed away from the potentially explosive situation and notified the local police, who quickly dismantled and removed it.



Twelve months earlier in Ashley County, Ark., deer hunters tipped sheriff's investigators to the fact that methamphetamine manufacturers had taken over remote deer blinds and were using them as labs. Narcotics detectives ended up finding four
cooking operations set up in Ashley County deer blinds.
In Wright County, Minn., four years before, cookers decided to use ice-
fishing shanties to manufacture meth on Waverly Lake. Game wardens notified Sheriff's Sergeant Todd Hoffman of the activity. When Hoffman arrived to investigate, he noticed a solvent smell seeping from one of the shacks......Indiana conservation officer Gregg agrees: "Meth has changed my job. It's gotten to the point where as a conservation officer these days you're better off going into a
situation thinking you may be dealing with meth rather than a game violation." Have I made my point? Kellory.

[jonny5buck]

Kellory with all due respect,so what? ...no-one is attempting to act like or say there isnt a problem with meth labs....The mainframe of the thread is about having no ''cause''...at all to come onto privately owned land...i would say a meth lab would be probable cause- ...and Checking hunters would still be in the normal job duties......Were talking about a warden walking on private land or posted land with absolutely no purpose whatsoever except to just see what someone is doing and MAYBE.. MAYBE.. get someone doing something illegal...
That to me is abuse of power,un-needed authority...they already have plenty of power to do there job correctly.If you want to keep beating the ''meth drum'' have at it...it doesnt fit into this topic i believe....believing because of reliable info that there is a meth lab in the woods is one thing,checking a duck hunting blind for duck hunters and stumbling across a meth lab is the same ..But ...walking up to a camper with NON-hunters and crossing onto private land for no reason but curiosity and having the outcome that it was is enough for me.

I understand you have family in law enforcement...so do i...there is line between abuse of power and doing your job....we dont need the government or any state employees walking on our property or any of my friends or families property ...we dont have meth labs,so thats where your arguement ends with me.You seem to have the attitude of so many cops who pull someone over for a lane change violation and ask to search the car,even though the driver has no warrants or does not seem to be impaired in any way...that mind set of ''if you have nothing to hide .than let me look''' is a slippery slope of a privacy violation.and abuse of power...not everyone is a criminal,and law abiding citizens have a right to refuse activity like your trying to justify...it aint happening ...ata least to me ...i know my rights up and down and in and out.and a damn good interpretation of the law and the legal system...as you can tell an infringement on peoples rights to privacy strikes a nerve with me...Wardens have plenty of power without a stupid law like this one on the books-

[kellory]

With respects, kellory.

[kellory]

I fully agree we must watch out for the slippery slope, it is dangerous to our liberty, I fully understand that. This has little to do with the legal owner of the property. illegal crops are found in farmer's fields, and in woods, and blinds taken over by the druggies, not the farmers or the hunters, They are trespassers, not legitimate and they are fairly well hidden. It is the out of place feel to something, not quite right that triggers a need to check something out. Let's turn this around abit. What if it were actually a hostage situation? home invasion maybe? And a CPO thinks something is a little odd. Nothing to see from outside but some cars and something going on inside, do you want him to ignore it, because it does not fit precisely within his rule book? or should he check out something that just feels wrong? He is not perfect, he makes mistakes like everyone else, but should he ignore it, or check it out? Did the Cpo ever say why he did what he did? I don't see this as an indication that the property owner is doing anything wrong, but that he may be being taken advantage of by criminals, either directly or indirectly. Spot checks to see if you have a permit, or a plug in your gun have been around a very long time, His job does include making sure those who ARE hunting have a legal right/license to do so, and to go where the hunters are to verify that fact. on public or private land. Should he be limited to counting the shells in your gun and making sure you mane is spelled correctly, or should he check out something that seems wrong to him? That as I see it is the real question. How far SHOULD he go as an officer of the court? With respects, kellory.

[kellory]

Sorry, this mouse sticks! I can't seem to figure out how to delete the duplicate.