| CURRENT WEATHER: Clear, 37° |
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
June 4, 2004
County protests BLM police power
By HEIDI J. BERTOLINO Sheriff Tony DeMeo said, in talking with other law enforcement officers in the state, that generally nobody had been alerted to the recent notice. He said under current law the BLM must offer a contract to local law enforcement officers if a problem arises on public lands. DeMeo said in discussions with BLM representatives he had been told that local officers had asked for help with the workload of law enforcement. He said the BLM had also cited problems at Sand Mountain and during Burning Man festivals on public lands in Churchill, Pershing and Washoe counties. He said the sheriffs in those counties had never been asked for help nor did they ever request it from the BLM. DeMeo said that BLM agents in Nye County would be assisted in any instance a violation of state law had taken place, there was no need for the BLM to be given the authority to arrest. Eastley said if the BLM was given police power to enforce drug and alcohol related crimes, violators would not be given a fair trial but would instead be sent to a federal magistrate. Durk Pearson added that the federal magistrate has no separation of power and that people being tried under the federal process would not be guaranteed a trial. The BLM has no authority over public safety as cited in the Register notice, Pearson added. The notice, a run-on sentence published May 3, introduces policy that would allow "BLM law enforcement officers to enforce on public lands regulations pertaining to alcohol and drug laws in a manner patterning current state of Nevada laws as contained in the Nevada Revised Statues in a effort to further the working relationship and partnerships formed with numerous sheriffs departments throughout Nevada and the Nevada Highway Patrol." According to the notice the BLM would be allowed to enforce state law as it pertains to driving under the influence of alcohol, minors in possession, open container and drug paraphernalia. Chairman Henry Neth said according to the definitions of paraphernalia listed in the Register notice the BLM could issue a citation to every rancher who had a shovel in the back of his pickup truck. The BLM controls 264 million acres of federal lands in the western Untied States, of which 18 percent is in Nevada. BLM land represents 67 percent of Nevada's land mass. According the bureau, the agency employs 200 law enforcement officers, mostly in Utah and California. Wayne and Helen Chenoweth-Hage spoke in protest of the notice, saying the federal government had never been given the power to enforce law. Chenoweth-Hage, a former Idaho congresswoman, said she hoped the commissioners would encourage the Nevada Association of Counties to submit a "resounding no" to the BLM. The general consensus of the commissioners and the public was that the BLM was taking the "back door approach to gain more power." Commissioner Candace Trummell said she would like to bring the recent notice to the attention of people at the federal level and get county lobbyists involved. The board voted unanimously to allow Eastley to send a letter to the BLM indicating they did not intend to grant the BLM police powers as indicated in the Federal Register notice. |
