Feb. 04--RICHMOND--Sen. Richard Stuart expects a crowd Monday morning for a hearing on his bill that would strip much of the police authority from state game wardens.
His bill essentially says that conservation officers cannot stop people to check whether they're complying with game laws without first having witnessed some suspicious activity.
Stuart, R–Stafford, says the fact that game wardens now can stop and check fishermen and hunters for no reason is a violation of the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.
"They're not game wardens anymore," Stuart said. "They are a uniformed police force with police powers. If they're police, they should have to operate under the rules of police."
That bill will be in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee on Monday morning.
It's related to two other bills that Stuart postponed for the year in a Senate committee last week. The bills have proved controversial, with emails flying that suggest Stuart's interest in restricting game wardens might be retaliation for game citations given to his friends or family.
Stuart said that isn't so.
"Contrary to the emails you've gotten from certain folks, this is nothing to do with me personally," he said to the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee.
One bill postponed for the year would have had the governor, rather than the Board of Game and Inland Fisheries, appoint the director of the department.
The other would have removed from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries the authority to enforce fishing and boating laws in certain tidal waters.
Stuart yanked those two bills, he said, with assurances from the DGIF that there will be more control over and training of conservation officers.
All three bills were sparked, Stuart said, by problems with a game warden in Westmoreland County.
"The reason I filed this bill, over the last few years we seem to have difficulty with the law enforcement side of Game and Inland Fisheries in the area that I represent," Stuart said.
He said a game warden in the Northern Neck had threatened hunters and made unreliable reports, and was eventually transferred. Three months later, Stuart said, hunters in Westmoreland reported to him that they'd been harassed by a group of game wardens.
"We had what I can only describe as Gestapo action in Westmoreland County. We had 10 uniformed officers come into that county, driving seven or eight brand-new Tahoes, and they chased hunters for seven days straight," Stuart told the committee. "I had one retired police officer tell me he was checked three times in one day. [That] certainly looked like retaliation to me against my constituents who had complained against this warden, and that gave me a great deal of concern."
Stuart said that DGIF officials have assured him they are working to alleviate the concerns he has with oversight of conservation officers.
"I think both of them would tell you that they know there is a problem, that they are getting on top of that problem, they are working diligently to resolve that problem," Stuart told the committee. "I am satisfied, in working with these individuals, that they're on top of this thing. To me it's important that we get on top of this and these folks get trained so they know how to treat people. Let's see if we can't resolve this without any action from this committee."
Because Stuart was asking the committee to continue his bills to 2013, no one else testified.
Chelyen Davis: 804/343-2245
Copyright 2012 - The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.
