Moose Droppings

“Fishing While Brown” Has Me Seeing Red

Aug 15, 2008 @ 12:19 am by Moose

Imagine you’re a game warden and you have caught a group of individuals violating the game laws. You can write them a ticket and let them go except none of them have a valid ID. Well this is the situation that Jeff Brown a NC Game Warden faced and he took all of them into custody. The reporter for the Indy, a local free far left leaning paper believes the color of these men’s skin is why they were arrested. HELLO they were stealing from all of us by fishing without a license plus he has no way to properly identify them.

Brown asked to see each of their fishing licenses, but no one had one. He then asked for their identification. Among them, all they had were two El Salvadorian ID cards and an expired California driver’s license. He arrested the five men—Antonio Ordaz, Jose Ernesto, Javier Jimenez, Edwin Marquez and Juan Aria—who, because they were fishing at the wrong hole at the wrong time, are in custody at the Immigration and Custom Enforcement holding facility in Alamance County Jail, waiting to be deported to their home countries.
The men could have merely been cited, but Brown chose to arrest them.
“We’re certified state law enforcement officers, and it’s up to an officer’s discretion whether to arrest someone,” Brown told the Indy. “If a person has no I.D. on them, and you feel that they may not appear in court on you, or that they may not pay the ticket off … yeah, we do arrest them.”

On top of that they are criminals because they are here illegally. I do not understand why anyone would expect a law officer, any law officer, to over look whether someone is here legally or not? If you come here illegally why would you respect any of other laws as well including fish & game laws? They are not facing deportation just because they fished in the wrong spot they are facing deportation because they are here illegally.

Of course the INDY must of uncovered ample evidence to prove that Game Wardens are purposely targeting brown skin individuals in the hopes of getting them deported. A pretty serious accusation they have seemed to lay out here but no real evidence to support it.

Within the last two years, N.C. Wildlife officers have checked the licenses of 110,000 anglers. Of those, about 5,000 of them were issued citations. How many of those citations resulted in arrest, the agency couldn’t say.

That translates into less then 5% of those checked getting a ticket and if you have a valid ID I’m sure you are cited and let go. I don’t fish much so I’ve haven’t been checked in a while but hunting I’ve been checked a number of times. The numbers just don’t support a conspiracy to target brown skinned people like the article alleges.

I think the INDY owes an apology to Officer Brown for even suggesting that he was prejudicial in checking these men and enforcing the law. Myself I think Officer Brown should get a big Thank You from the citizens of this state because he got five criminals off the street as well as protecting our natural resources.