Some satisfying suggestions from Coyote Blog. H/t Popehat, which suggests that the trick to dealing with a butthead in an organization is to find the adult in the room.
Our quiet little community is having trouble with a game warden who apparently doesn't have enough work to do making sure people don't keep undersized fish or shoot whooping cranes because they mistake them for sandhill cranes in an area where you can't shoot those, either. This fellow's mission in life for the last few years has been to end the scourge of golf-carts on sleepy little low-speed public roads on our tiny peninsula. He never actually writes tickets, believing (reasonably) that he would only be embarrassed if the residents took the matter before a local judge. The citizens are beginning to talk together about standing on their rights and insisting that he either write them a ticket or stop harassing them.
The game warden has no support for his golf-cart jihad among local law enforcement or county officials, but he is a state employee who needn't care what they think, and apparently his superiors in the state administration are unconcerned by suggestions received from both citizens and local officials. Now, however, the county commissioners have gone so far as to ask the state legislature to change the transportation code to permit golf carts in the rural areas of our county, a proposal that apparently is going to work just fine. It probably will drive the game warden crazy, but maybe he can find some frozen raspberries to obsess over. Possibly the local schools will let him arrest children who chew poptarts into the shapes of guns.
21 comments:
It's always disappointing when local authority isn't respected. You guys could do without the state imposing this particular authority figure upon you, but you have no way of getting rid of him because he works for a distant bureaucracy that doesn't care what you think.
This is the kind of person what causes unrest, as Monty Python says.
That was a good article, by the way. Thank you.
If the game warden is an employee of your state, the way to handle this is to write to your state legislators in support of the change in the transportation code requested by your Commissioners. Oversight of state employees is their job. Do not use email: fax or snail mail are more likely to get their attention.
You need to send a number of letters, from different people, and well-written, explaining that the purpose of this amendment is to curb the persistent abuse of discretion by a state official; that you would welcome any solution to end the problem, which is a local one, and that you are open to compromise if that portion of the code has a different effect in other localities.
You may want to form a Group for this purpose, because state officials are always more interested in hearing from Groups than from individuals.
I hope you have quicker success than the people living around Selma, Texas. It took years to get rid of the speed trap on I 35. The old Selma courthouse is now a Hooters, surely a more honorable use of an innocent building.
Valerie
A number of people, including local elected and unelected officials, have been writing letters of this sort to various state agencies (park-related, game-related) for years, to no effect. Now and then the sheriff or some other local notable speaks to the offending officer, and he settles down, but he always starts back up again.
The state legislature apparently is on board to do the Transportation Code fix. They've already done something similar for another county, so this requires only a quick piggyback. It was what the Commissioners Court came up with in consultation with the County Attorney after nothing else seemed to work.
What's weird is that the guy lives right around the corner, but seems impervious to the growing resentment. He used to be well-liked, and his wife still is.
Maybe some tit-for-tat. Follow him around and document every real infraction he commits and hale him into court or some other, local, public, and formal forum for it. The more minor the infraction, the better, if there are enough of them to not simply be a nuisance to the forum.
Eric Hines
If the guy is being a jerk, and it is a small tight knit community, shun him. "We reserve the right to refuse service."
That sounds right to me. "I'm sorry, but we can't sell you milk and eggs. You'll have to go over to the next town. While you're there, why not stay?"
This has been going on for years, and he's proving surprisingly immune. I never would have thought someone who's otherwise a pretty decent guy could be that insensitive to public opinion. He's on some kind of safety mission, and perhaps takes himself for a martyr to the cause, not that his neighbors perceive any danger.
I never would have thought someone who's otherwise a pretty decent guy could be that insensitive to public opinion.
Well, that's a point in his favor, at least. I don't give a good goddamn what anyone else thinks, if I'm sure I'm right.
The problem with this guy is that he's chosen to take his stand on a matter of no importance whatsoever. You stand and fight over matters of principle. Golf carts almost certainly don't qualify.
It's not so much that it's a question of no importance. If he wanted to paint his house in polka dots or have zebras on the premises, I'd say bravo to his indifference to public opinion. The problem is that he's making his stand on his right to interfere in our freedom of movement on the roads in the manner that suits us as a community, and it's just not his friggin' business or place to say how we should make ourselves "safer"-- but the state law gives him the legal power to harass us.
I suppose he is haunted by the specter of innocents harmed by unregulated golf carts; he claims to have been horribly alarmed one night when he rushed out of his driveway some perceived emergency and almost hit an unlighted golf cart. I wish he'd work it out in therapy. It's not unlit golf carts at night that he's out there threatening to give tickets to; if it were, he'd probably find some public sympathy. He's bothering adult drivers in plain daylight, operating sober and at reasonable speeds. Frankly, anyone who peals out of his driveway at night without taking a good look is himself the problem. What if there had been pedestrians out there? Should they be prohibited, too? But he sees himself as a misunderstood hero, braving the cold gales of unjust public opinion. Bah. Another Nanny Bloomberg, but foisted on us rather than elected.
How does a Game warden get traffic control jurisdiction?
"for he hath sent for multitudes of officers to harass us and eat out our substance"
Not sure why, but the county officials tell me that all the state park employees and game wardens have jurisdiction to enforce state traffic laws, though most of them rarely do. That's why the county had to go to the trouble of modifying the state law just to get this guy under control. It makes you wonder what's going on in his chain of command. Don't any of his bosses care how much he's pissing off everyone in the county? (Guess not.)
They don't care. Pretty obvious. They may even back him, in the way that bureacratic organizations will back their own, even if wrong, (and from what you say, technically he is not wrong). So they have absolutely no interest in reining in the guy, since to do so would actually be reducing their power.
Just one more illustration of the police state at work.
Just one more illustration of the police state at work.
Sorry Eric, but that made me laugh out loud. If that's the police state at work, I could actually tolerate one.
Heh... Barney Fife Police State.
It was petty little 'crats who facilitated the standout tyrannies of the 20th century. Any HOA or the DMV will show one or two ready to step into ANY job that involves pushing around someone. Lot's of them end up as cops, lawyers and politicians, of course.
The common thread is cowardice, the assurance that they can harass with impunity. There are days when I think we should return to the practice of the duel. Of course, that would imply that honor was a recognized commodity...
"How does a Game warden get traffic control jurisdiction?"
Actually, in many towns and municipalities they will have a shared jurisdiction agreement between the various LEO's for the area. I know in the Marine Corps they always have such, not only as a show of unity between agencies but also as a practical matter -- a sheriff's officer in pursuit of a vehicle that drives onto a base in an attempt to escape will be allowed to continue pursuit (with a lot of back-up) and make the arrest. Here in Montana the Level IV LEO for the Forest Circus can issue citations for highways as well as off-road due to the simple fact that there aren't enough PO to cover the area.
Hey, Barney Fife wore a gun. I typically don't laugh at people with guns. (well, at least where they can see me.)
Right after the TSA got created, I saw some satirical photoshopped pictures showing Barney Fife in the guise of a TSA agent like so:
http://i557.photobucket.com/albums/ss16/n4zhg/FAA-SS.jpg
As the song goes, "...Nobody is laughing anymore".
For petty tyrants, the Barney Fife thing is pretty accurate. They have a modicum of power and act as if they control the destiny of the universe in their hands. They're petty, supercilious, and generally not much more than nuisances. If they become MORE than nuisances then it's no longer accurate.
I wonder how Herr Obersturmbannfuhrer Forest Ranger would react if everyone took to calling him Barney Fife?
oooh. Good idea! "Hey Barney! How's it hangin?"
I like this guy. Stupid laws need to be enforced to the limit! Otherwise no one will try to get them repealed, and they'll remain festering on the books, to be used against otherwise law-abiding citizens whenever the local DA needs something to harass someone with.
In fact ALL laws should be absolutely enforced. Maybe then we'd get some of them repealed.
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