ORIGINAL: R.S.B.
You obviously don’t have any idea about what is required for an investigative field check or a lawful vehicle stop for that matter.
You do not have to have probable case for a license check, bag check or for stopping and questioning a hunter or a person in a vehicle. All that is required, by the law and courts, for any officer, Game Commission or any other law enforcement officer, to stop and question a person, in our out of a vehicle, and conduct a brief investigative detention is reasonable suspicion. Reasonable suspicion is simply articuable facts that would lead a reasonably prudent person believe that criminal activity is a foot.
No, nor does your average police officer need probable cause to do a feild check on a driver, etc. But they do not abuse that right, and if they do, they and/or their superiorssoon hear about it.
Resonable suspicion is the key word here. The fact of "just being there" does not nesc fulfill the requirement of resonable suspicion (unless you suspect everyone of being up to criminal activity) but would rather only pass muster as 1 part of several points taken as a whole, including suspicios behavior, etc. The example of "driving down the road" given by Windwalker7 is a fitting one.
During the stop and investigative detention iswhenthe officer islooking for additional satisying facts that lead tosending the person on their way or for developing the probable cause for a search anddeveloping additional evidenceto make an arrest if the additional evidence is present.
I am so sorry that you are having such a hard time with legal and justified law enforcement. But, if you want to be a functional member of society you will just have to learn to live by the standards acceptedby society, the laws and the courts and I guess that includes Game Wardens checking hunters.
Dick Bodenhorn
WCO, Elk County
Here IS the problem with the way PGC WCOs see things and the way "other" officersdo and maybe it is the training. We do live by a set of standards as a "funtional member of society"
(and the way you phrase this last paragraph, and especially this part of it, shows more than a small portion of the arrogance and attitude that has so many persons feeling that the PGC needs to be revamped and held to a higher standard) and in general "we" have no problem with any other Law Enforcement Officers. BUT a pattern seems to have developed over the years where the WCOs of this state have been treating persons with "suspicion that crminal activity is afoot" from the start in most all encounters while other law enforcement is held to a higher standard.
And being one of those "telling stories" I will say this, tho you will most likely disregard regard it as a "story" anyway.
Save those whom I met at public functions like Sports Shows and the like, all of my encountersand those of my family with WCOs have all been negative. I have no reason to beleive that my father, brother, etc are "making it up" or exagerating. I have never broken a law in my life and neither have they, yet only WCOs find the need to treat us with suspicion "of criminal activity" from the start. (and feeling like it is a case of "guilty until proven innocent" every time) In the encounter I posted I mentioned that one of my companions was a State Trooper. I will not post his name and troop just to back up my account because it is not my privalage to do so and I won't do anything to give him grief and he is too well know in the community for it not to. I WILL say this, he, in his experience and training in law enforcement, has said more than once that were he to act like the WCOs he has met it would never be tolerated, either as a public relations item or as a legal one. Same with any other civic police force. Those that do act like that are quickly moved, reassigned or led to finding another feild of work.
Oh, and a reminder. As members of that society, WE are part of those who put "you" in the position of enforcing those laws and as such it is "we" whom you work for. Also, just because someone hasn't taken the PGC to task for the attitude of at least some if it's officers (yet), does not mean that the problem does not exist. ItIS a very difficult and expensive thing to make a case against a Government Agency or it's personell and often takes years and several tries to get the courts to hear the case or the legislature to remedy the situation.
Better would be that you were to take the concerns posted on sites like this to heart and forward them to your superiors and/or the persons directly responsible for the training and education of PGC field personell, especially in the regards of hunter/WCO interaction and encounter management.