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The question brought to us is “it has been documented that Forest Service law enforcement is not sending as many criminal referrals forward to the Department of Justice for prosecution since 2001, why would that be the case?” Law enforcement is one of the most important parts of the Forest Service organization, especially as lands get used more by growing populations.
I would ask if anyone has any ideas and/or evidence as to why this might be happening, please comment below. If you don’t feel comfortable in an open forum, please email me at terraveritas at gmail.com.
From this link to the Forest Service website:
Special Agents are criminal investigators who plan and conduct investigations concerning possible violations of criminal and administrative provisions of the Forest Service and other statues (sic) under the U.S. Code. Special agents are normally plain clothes officers who carry concealed firearms, and other defensive equipment, make arrests, carry out complex criminal investigations, present cases for prosecution to U.S. Attorneys, and prepare investigative reports. Typically there is one special agent stationed in each geographic zone. All field agents are required to travel a great deal and usually maintain a case load often to fifteen ongoing criminal investigations at one time.
In addition, criminal investigators/special agents:
- Work cooperatively with Federal, State, local and tribal law enforcement agencies
- Conduct complex criminal and civil investigations involving Drug Trafficking Organizations, domestic terrorism and claims for or against the government
- Conduct undercover and surveillance operations
- Testify in court on behalf of the government
Some examples of criminal cases are:
- Illegal outfitter and guiding
- Theft of government property
- Timber theft
- Investigations of wildland fire origins
- Manufacture and distribution of controlled substances
- Assault of Federal employees or volunteers
Criminal investigators occasionally conduct internal and civil claim investigations.
From my own position of very little knowledge, the reasons could be a) there are fewer people in the past (harder to recruit, less funding?, b) they are collaborating with others in a different way so the prosecutions don’t go through the FS, c) wildfire investigations are using more time, d) illegal marijuana grows are using more time. A regional breakdown will be helpful in testing hypotheses, but we don’t have that yet.
Ideas?
Thanks to a knowledgeable person who volunteered an answer:
Why are there fewer cases going to DOJ for criminal prosecution?
I had an FBI agent explain it to me like this, after I reported some federal crimes he wasn’t going to investigate, telling me has didn’t have jurisdiction, then I explained how he did and he said no one had ever done that before so we’ll so he’d give me 30 more seconds to break it down and it’s kind of relevant. He said he has a list in his notebook of addresses with doors he needs to kick down when he can get the warrant. Behind each door he expects to find children being raped on video cameras, and they catch so many from their ongoing operations, he never comes close to getting to the end of list. There’s increasingly fewer qualified applicants to be special agents, and stagnating budgets and increasing costs and an increasing willingness to ignore increasing crime are changing law enforcement in this country, and not for the better. There’s only so many federal courts, and one very near to a National Forest Im aware of closed recently. Like the previous commenter said, US Attorney’s have piles of cases pending, and it’s beyond that because the real bottle neck is the federal courts that are not being expanded, there’s just no money or competent staff. National Forest Special Agents have to compete with child porn, drugs, guns, murder, fraud, public corruption, and cases can drag out for years in courts that are completely swamped and not expanding. Also, in States with harsh justice systems it’s easy to get railroaded into a criminal conviction that deprives the courts of eligible jurors, making things even worse. So you picked up an arrowhead or poached, there’s a hundred child porn cases in the same region that haven’t even been charged yet, they have to have a grand jury indict to charge things in federal court. It’s bad. It’s really bad and it’s not getting better because what happens when local law enforcement breaks the law on federal land, what happens when public officials are dirty, if the feds are overwhelmed at all times, nothing happens, they just get to be dirty and make the federal public lands dirty not caring about them.