Elephant Butte ranger sentenced to probation

Park ranger Clyde Woods has been sentenced to 5 years probation and 1 year house arrest for fatally shooting an unarmed belligerent camper who refused to pay his camping fee. Details about the shooting can be found in the post: The Incident at Elephant Butte Lake.

New Mexico park ranger gets five years probation in shooting death (Albuquerque Tribune)

A former New Mexico State Parks ranger has been sentenced to five years' probation and one year of house arrest in the fatal shooting of a man in a dispute over a campsite fee at Elephant Butte State Park.

State District Judge Kevin Sweazea on Wednesday ordered Clyde Woods to wear an electronic ankle monitoring bracelet for a year before serving probation.

Woods pleaded guilty in March to voluntary manslaughter in the August 2005 death of Bruce Teschner, 58. Teschner - who according to testimony was drunk and had a history of mental illness - refused to pay a $14-a-night camping fee and refused to leave the park.

Woods said he acted in self-defense. He said Teschner turned and made a motion as if he were pulling a weapon. Witnesses said Teschner was running away when he was shot.

State Police said at the time that the camper resisted arrest and was moving away from Woods, apparently keeping his hands in his pockets, when the fatal shots were fired.

Teschner was shot twice in the back of the neck, authorities said.

Special Prosecutor Scot Key had sought the maximum punishment for Woods, seven years behind bars. But defense attorney Gary Mitchell asked Sweazea to give Woods probation.

Before the sentencing, clinical psychologist Eric Westfried testified for the defense that Woods poses no threat to the community. He also told the court that a more thorough psychological evaluation before Woods was admitted to the police academy might have found him an unsuitable candidate for law enforcement.

The victim's brother, Charles Teschner, testified that arthritis forced his brother to give up his jewelry-making business, and he had been given a diagnosis of depression and put on medication. He said his brother was "obviously self-medicating with alcohol" in the last months of his life.

He told the judge that he believed Woods had to know that his brother was unarmed.

Several community members told the judge that Woods was a dedicated father, an avid community volunteer and an asset to his hometown.

Woods apologized to Teschner's family for taking the man's life but said he did the best he could with what he had the evening he was called to Teschner's campsite.

"I'm sorry for what happened," Woods said as he sobbed and looked briefly at Teschner's family.

The worst canoe trip since Deliverance

In August Emmerich Koller and his two children, Marina (age 26) and Andrew (age 11) went on a 5 day canoe trip through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Not even a boy sitting on his front porch playing Dueling Banjos could have alerted them to what would happen on this trip.

Night of terror in BWCA still haunts family (StarTibune.com)

The trouble began before dusk on Aug. 7, when the five men and the teenager went to Basswood Lake in two motorboats to "have some fun," according to Barton.

Koller said he and his family heard shooting north of their campsite while they were eating supper about 7:30 p.m. on the first night of their BWCA trip.

"Here I am in this pristine wilderness and you don't expect to hear gunshots," he said. "And it was not just hunting rifles, but repeat rifles, semiautomatic."

About 10 p.m., three men in a motorboat stopped near the Kollers' campsite and began talking loudly and cursing. At the time, Koller didn't think they were involved in the earlier shooting.

He said he turned on his flashlight and asked them to be quiet, but was cursed, ridiculed for his accent -- Koller grew up in Hungary -- and told to shut up.

"They really cussed me out and cursed me out using every imaginable obscenity," Emmerich Koller said. "I was really taken aback. They seemed messed up, either drunk or on drugs, I don't know. They were scaring my family."

In the complaint, Olson told investigators that the men "kind of pushed it, yeah. We should have stopped."

Koller said Tuesday that when the men left, they lifted their motor out of the water and "revved it up." They shot a flare that exploded in the sky before leaving to meet up with their friends in a nearby bay.

While there, the five men and teenager sat in their boats, drank beer and fired off more rounds from several weapons.

Koller said that about 11 p.m. his son woke him to tell him a boat was approaching.

"As they got closer, I got an inkling: 'We've got to get out of here,'" Emmerich Koller said.

Koller and his children fled to the woods, pushing deep into the brush where they "just hunkered down and listened to their ranting and raving."

For the next 45 minutes, the men poked around the campsite, commenting in vulgar terms about the family's sleeping bags and food.

At one point, Marina Koller told authorities, one of the men said, "Maybe if you make us s'mores for an hour, we won't ... kill you!"[The men said] they were going to kill me and rape us all, in very graphic terms," Emmerich Koller said. "We were very scared. My daughter was just trembling behind me, and we were just holding onto each other."

A part-time bartender, Marina Koller said she'd never heard such foul language, even in a bar.

About 15 minutes after the men left, Emmerich Koller called 911 and told a Lake County dispatcher what was happening. At the same time, the five men and teenager headed to a nearby beach to swim, where they confronted two adults, their five children and two friends of the children.

Two of the men skinny-dipped. One of the adults told investigators that the men used "a lot of f-words" and threatened a sexual assault.

By then, however, several more campers had called authorities to report men racing around "shooting guns,"terrorizing people" and setting fire to the lake with gasoline.

Men charged in BWCA terrorizing and shooting mayhem (Timberjay Newspapers Online)

Cell phone calls from threatened campers alerted law enforcement that the men were shouting threats and obscenities while shooting firearms and fireworks from two motorized boats. Lake County Sheriff’s deputies and federal agents were able track the progress of the men from the calls and intercept their boats as they returned to the Fall Lake landing around midnight.

Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Hoberg contacted U.S. Forest Service Agent Chip Elkins for assistance in apprehending the suspects.

The boat with a 16-year-old male, Olson and Lakner arrived at the landing. Lakner was wearing a knit hat with fake dreadlocks attached to it. Hoberg had known Lakner for over 20 years, but did not recognize him at first.

During the pat-search, Hoberg noticed Lakner was wearing a .45 caliber semi-automatic side arm and had another bullet clip on his belt.

As the officers continued arrest procedures, they heard the second boat approaching and instructed the first three suspects to remain silent.

However, Lakner continually talked louder, according to the complaint, apparently trying to alert the second boat of their situation. Ely Police Officer Chad Hood began to escort Lakner to a squad car about 50 yards away, but Lakner persisted shouting to the point that Hood had to wrestle him to the ground and cover his mouth.

During an audio and videotape interview after his arrest, Fenske admitted they did not go on the excursion to fish. He said he and his boat partners almost turned back at Jackfish Bay because it was dark and they couldn’t find the others until they saw their fireworks.

Barton stated on tape that the whole group just wanted to have some fun and “stir things up a little bit.” He said they laughed about the comments they made to campers and “thought it was cute and funny.”

Of the weapons found, one was a Russian or Romanian made AK-47 assault rifle. However it was discovered to be semiautomatic, rather than fully automatic.

Through complainant statements made to Agent Elkins, he realized the boat containing Lakner, Olson and the juvenile traveled into Canada. Elkins notified Ontario officials who asked him to enter Canadian territory and retrieve the evidence.

Boaters and campers provided officers with a beer bottle and 13 spent shell casings. A variety of other evidence surfaced later and included more beer bottles, spent casings, cardboard tubes and paper remains from spent fireworks.

A criminal investigation and charges from Canada are uncertain at this time.

In all, Deputy Hoberg and Agent Elkins talked to at least 80 people regarding the case.

If convicted, penalties for each count of aiding and abetting terroristic threats, harassment and firearms possession is five years incarceration, or a $10,000 fine, or both. Theft penalties include one year incarceration, a $3,000 fine, or both. Reckless discharge of a firearm, transporting an uncased firearm, and possession and use of fireworks all have penalties of 90 days incarceration, a $1,000 fine, or both.

I first heard about this story in the blog Lagniappe's Lair. The author of this blog states that when he goes camping he always brings a .357 Magnum revolver or an AR-15A1 assault rifle. Despite how horrible the Boundary Waters story is, I would not recommend carrying firearms with you while you are camping, unless you are Dirty Harry (he favored the .357 Magnum) or Rambo (who favored the AR-15A1, aka the M16).

Hey, DNR, kiss my ass!

Ranger Bob over at the Retread Ranger Station has shared a story of a camper who pulled down his pants and asked an Indiana Conservation Officer to kiss his ass.

Charges filed in an alleged mooning case (South Bend Tribune)

In the top 10 list of things one shouldn't do to an Indiana Conservation Officer, flagrantly exposing your buttocks to one probably ranks right up there. Also, inviting said officer to smooch those buttocks is likely on the no-no list. Yet, those alleged offenses are what landed one Plymouth man in jail Labor Day weekend, after allegedly drinking enough to cause him to become a bit cheeky when an officer visited his campsite near Gilbert Lake.

The man then reportedly again exposed his hindquarters and shouted what Salb wrote were "the sweet words sure to perk up the ears of every conservation officer." In other words, Dowdle reported, the man yelled, "Hey, DNR, kiss my (expletive)." That was enough for Dowdle, who headed back around the lake to speak with the man again. This time, his words were succinct and to the point. "You don't even have to stand up," he was quoted as saying to the man. "Just put your hands behind your back."

After his arrest, the man was taken to the Marshall County Jail, where he was booked on charges of public nudity and public intoxication.

This has to be a Rhadamanthine Citation if I have ever seen one.

Home on the Range with Action Jackson

Muggs over at Yellowstone Park News has featured a story from the New West about former Yellowstone seasonal backcountry ranger Bob "Action" Jackson. Jackson worked for over 30 years as a backcountry ranger in Yellowstone's Thorofare district. Here Jackson describes why he decided to stay a seasonal ranger and not go permanent:

My dual career in bison and backcountry rangering happened because of one defining incident early on. I saw my retiring district ranger boss, at the acknowledged pinnacle of rangerdom, steal a big box of toilet paper as his very last official act in Yellowstone. This was a sturdy, tall, deep-voiced and well measured man, the type of ranger tourists imagined. He had spent his life as a ranger at the envied Big Five of Western national parks and it was the life I strived for upon coming to Yellowstone. As I watched this empty shell of a man struggle to get his long arms around the taxpayers’ 128 rolls of wipe so he could put it in the back of his station wagon, I knew then and there I didn’t want a career that ended on a toilet seat.

Jackson was considered to be an exceptional ranger by his supervisors, until he caught the media's attention with his adept skills at catching elk poachers. Apparently, Jackson went blabbing his mouth to the press about the local hunting outfitters unethical practice of salting National Forest lands just outside the park boundary to lure in elk for high paying clients to shoot. Park management, worried about negative media attention forced Jackson to sign an illegal gag order and terminated his seasonal employment before the fall hunting season.

Extensive details of the incident can be found in Thunderbear's December 2001 article The Seasonal Who Cried Salt. A follow-up on the fallout over the incident can be found in Thunderbear's November 2002 article Hell Hath No Fury.

Were glad to see that Ranger Jackson has found a career that won't end on a toilet seat. It's too bad the National Park Service doesn't reward these kind of employees, instead of punish them.

Introducing Ranger Gord's Rhadamanthine Citations

Part of a park ranger's job is to educate park visitors about the law. While most visitors simply need a helpful reminder to follow the rules, there are those who just won't follow the rules unless they are given the right motivation. Park ranger's typically carry motivational notes in packs of 25 in a shiny metal ticket book and will freely distribute them out to anyone who insists that the rules just don't apply to them.

Usually writing tickets is not a pleasurable experience for a park ranger. Negative reinforcement is not a pleasant experience for either the giver or the receiver. No one likes when they have to swat their dog on the nose for chewing up their shoes, but sometimes it is the only thing that will get them to stop their bad behavior.

Occasionally, however, you run into the ignoramus that wants to challenge your authority and openly tells you that they are going to continue to break the law in the future. These people don't just deserve a ticket, they have earned one. I have to admit that with these type of people, I get a certain pleasure in issuing a citation. Ranger Gord refers to these citations as Rhadamanthine Citations.

You are probably wondering, "What the hell does rhadamanthine mean?"

rhadamanthine (Dictionary.com)

Rhad·a·man·thine: adj. Strictly and uncompromisingly just.

Here we can see the word's origin:

Weird Words: Rhadamanthine (Weird Words)

We are taught less about the classics than we once were, so the name of Rhadamanthus (sometimes spelt Rhadamanthys) probably rings few bells. In Greek mythology, he was the son of Zeus and Europa, brother to King Minos of Crete and (in some versions of the tale), Prince Sarpedon of Lycia. In life he was renowned for his wisdom and justice. When he died, according to Plato, he went to Elysium, where the most favoured mortals were chosen by the gods to stay eternally, and there became ruler and judge. Together with Minos and Aeacus, he decided the fate of everyone who was brought before him —whether to live forever in Elysium, or be banished to the underworld and in judging was able to detect all the sins of one's life, no matter how well hidden. So Rhadamanthus became a byword for justice in its most severe and rigorous form.

Ranger Gord's Rhadamanthine Citations are given to people who not just broke the law, but people who knew they were breaking the law and then want to challenge the authority of a park ranger's authority to enforce that law. People who recieve Rhadamanthine Citations often believe that park rangers are assholes.

Rhadamanthine Citation #1:

fuck park rangers (FARR)

i went fishing for the first time in about 7 years the other day. somewhere around the hartwell damn, and a fucking park ranger sneaks out of the woods like fucking chuck norris in delta force. at this point it was about 9:30am and i was already half-cocked. i had tottaly forgot that you need a fishing licsence. ofcoarse i dont have one, and ofcoarse that mother-fucker asked for it. i didnt even catch any fish and this fuck bag wanted me to show him a fucking licsence. needless to say,but, i got a citation to go to court in a town i have never been to, and will never go to again.so now i have to pay about $150 for throwing string with a hook on the end of it in the water. what the fuck has this world come to? what happened to the days where you walked around with a loin cloth on, and ate peyote?

Apparently Mr. FARR was unaware of the obscure South Carolina law that requires all fisherman aged 16 or older to purchase a fishing license. A standard resisdent fishing license in South Carolina costs a mere $10.00. South Carolina even has made accomodations for those who don't understand modern technology and simply want to throw a "string with a hook on the end" by having a $3.00 cane pole permit (anyone hear the sound of dueling banjos?). After seeing Mr. FARR's superior command of the English language, I can only assume that he was a pleasure to deal with.