Liberty Belle
Well-known member
I've highlighted the part of this story that deals with Prieksat and with GF&P and the hunting lockout that resulted from the actions of both. Prieksat is NOT the only problem. It's maddening that these governmental agencies sneaked around behind the back of the county sheriff to arrest the pilot hired by the local predator control board to protect us from four-legged predators.
Three cases ignited firestorm over federal game warden
By Kevin Woster, Journal staff
Three high-profile legal cases in western South Dakota were key factors in shaping the well-publicized campaign by Gov. Mike Rounds and his chief of staff to oust federal game warden Bob Prieksat.
Prieksat, a three-state supervisory agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Pierre, was the lead investigator in a federal case that cost Bear Country USA and two members of its family partnership more than $100,000 in fines, restitution and legal fees.
Prieksat also was the man who slapped the handcuffs on a Harding County coyote hunter in a 2003 aerial-hunting case that angered the local sheriff and helped set off a ranch-country protest that closed about 4 million acres of land to hunting.
And the controversial agent known for his rigid law-enforcement style also led a 2003 investigation aimed at bringing criminal charges against state Game, Fish & Parks Department Secretary John Cooper and hunting partner Eric Washburn, a former aide to U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, in connection with a Black Hills elk hunt that fall.
The Cooper investigation ended without criminal charges, but Cooper and Washburn agreed to give up the process meat from the two elk they shot during the hunt. And a few weeks after that, Gov. Mike Rounds and his chief of staff, Rob Skjonsberg, met with Prieksat's regional supervisor to ask that Prieksat be reassigned.
Prieksat, who earned conservation-officer-of-the-year honors as a GF&P employee in the 1980s, survived the January 2004 meeting with his job intact. But he also worked under the critical eye of Rounds and Skjonsberg, who finally went public with their case against the agent in January.
Skjonsberg ordered GF&P conservation officers — a number of whom defend Prieksat off the record — to stop working with the agent except in special instances approved by current GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk. And Rounds and Skjonsberg again asked Fish and Wildlife regional law-enforcement supervisor Gary Mowad of Denver to reassign Prieksat.
Mowad defended Prieksat as a top-flight field agent with a clean service record. But he also said he hoped that the dispute with the governor's office could be settled.
This time, Rounds and Skjonsberg were joined in their criticism of Prieksat by dozens of hunters and landowners who claim to have been the victims of overzealous law enforcement and bullying tactics. With signed statements outlining their complaints, that group has sought attention from the news media and Prieksat's supervisors with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Skjonsberg met last month in Pierre with a Fish and Wildlife Service official from Washington, D.C., and expects a response from the agency within 60 days. Whatever that means for Bob Prieksat's future, his past involvement in the Janvrin, Cooper and Casey cases is seen by some as a clear connection to the unusual involvement of the governor and this chief of staff.
State Sen. Bill Napoli of Rapid City, a frequent Rounds critic, noted that the governor's office didn't go after Prieksat until after the agent caused trouble for people with political connections, in particular Cooper.
"People I've talked to said it was only a matter of time before he (Prieksat) would get to the wrong person," Napoli said. "He messed with the wrong guy when he tried to arrest Cooper and that bunch — which probably should have happened, I don't know. But he got so far out of control that he busted the wrong guys."
Rounds and Skjonsberg deny that Prieksat's investigation of Cooper or the other high-profile cases was their motivation for taking on Prieksat in public. Rounds also said he wasn't intervening on behalf of family members or close friends.
"There was no one single issue," Rounds said. "It was a preponderance of incidents that have occurred over an extended period of time, more than three years, that showed an extremely aggressive and what we consider to be inappropriate approach to the enforcement of game laws."
Few incidents could equal the Harding County case, the Bear Country charges and the investigation of Cooper and Washburn for the public attention they drew, or their likely impact on the state challenge of Prieksat that exists today
Arrest and lockout
Harding County Sheriff Bill Clarkson said he wasn't surprised when he heard three months ago that Gov. Mike Rounds wanted to oust Prieksat.
"I was not surprised at all, because I've dealt with him up here," Clarkson said. "And I just think the way he handled things here was all wrong."
In March of 2003, Prieksat arrested Harding County rancher Jerry Janvrin for illegal aerial hunting in the killing of two coyotes. Clarkson said he learned of the arrest when he got a telephone call from Janvrin, who was handcuffed and in a vehicle with Prieksat and another enforcement agent headed for Rapid City.
Clarkson was angry that he wasn't involved in or notified of the arrest and believed there was no reason for Janvrin to be handcuffed and hauled away.
"Jerry is one of those guys I could have called on the phone and told him to be at the courthouse in Rapid City at 1 p.m., and he would have got in the pickup and drove down there," Clarkson said. "Prieksat and somebody else came to the calving barn and took Jerry out in handcuffs, for two misdemeanors."
Clarkson said he made that point to Prieksat by telephone after the arrest.
"I said, 'You should call when you come in my county. This is my county, and you talk to me first,'" Clarkson said. "He said, 'I can go anywhere, anytime and do anything I want.'"
Janvrin paid a $2,000 fine after a federal jury found him guilty on one of two charged counts of violating airborne hunting laws. He declined comment for this story. Prieksat has consistently rejected interview requests.
Some critics argue that Prieksat's handling of the Janvrin case sparked the landowner protest, now called the South Dakota Lockout, which then spread to affect GF&P.
"We feel like we're getting drug into the fracas," GF&P official Emmett Keyser of Pierre told the Journal in October of 2003. "And we're kind of innocent bystanders."
But Clark Blake, a rancher and aerial hunter from Camp Crook, said GF&P officers called Prieksat in on the Janvrin case, then tried to step away from their responsibility. Blake said the governor's attacks on Prieksat appear to be aimed at least in part on diverting attention from GF&P policies and conservation officers who often worked with and supported the federal agent and his tactics.
"I think Game, Fish & Parks has been using Prieksat to do their unpleasant arrests," Blake said. "On two separate occasions, I've heard (GF&P official) Art Smith refer to Prieksat as 'our enforcement guy.'"
Smith denies ever saying that. Prieksat takes the lead role in aerial hunting investigations because that's the responsibility of federal wildlife agents, Smith said.
"I have never referred to Bob as 'our enforcement guy,'" Smith said. "He is the enforcement person for the federal Airborne Hunting Act, so it's appropriate for him to be involved."
Blake said many state conservation officers stick up for Prieksat and appear envious of his ability to operate beyond the confines of state policies and politics. He said Rounds should spend at least as much time fixing GF&P and its relationship to landowners as he does criticizing Prieksat.
"I guess as long as I follow the law, which I try to do, Bob Prieksat isn't the problem," Blake said. "The problem is Game, Fish & Parks has all these regulations that can be really hard to follow. If we violate any of those little requirements, they turn it over to their enforcement guy, Bob Prieksat, and we end up in federal court."
Cooper's elk hunt
GF&P Secretary John Cooper didn't end up in federal court in 2003 after Prieksat's investigation into his elk hunt with former Senate aide Erick Washburn. But Cooper was the subject of a series of news stories and calls for his resignation.
Cooper and Washburn, a resident of the Washington, D.C., area, hunted together in October 2003 in a Black Hills elk season open only to residents of the state. But Washburn previously had been granted special residency status by former Gov. Bill Janklow, who wanted to thank the aide for work on South Dakota issues in Congress.
Cooper said at the time that neither he nor Washburn violated any laws in the hunt. And in late November 2003, he announced that the U.S. attorney's office was dropping the investigation and would not bring charges.
Washburn and Cooper had to forfeit the processed meat from the elk they shot, however. And the incident prompted extensive off-the-record sniping at Cooper by GF&P employees. Napoli made his criticism public, asking for Cooper's resignation or termination by Rounds — a request the governor rejected.
Cooper critics speculated that he was angry at Prieksat over the investigation and that his anger spread to the governor's office and inspired the move against Prieksat, a charge that Rounds and Skjonsberg deny.
Napoli said the state should have long ago dealt with Prieksat's apparent lack of common courtesy in dealing with the public. He said state legislators knew about Prieksat after Janvrin told the story of his arrest to members of the Appropriations Committee.
But it was Cooper's situation that finally prompted the governor's office to get involved, Napoli said.
"Rounds was willing to ignore the bottom dwellers. He was willing to ignore the middle people and even businesses at the top. But when his own guy gets threatened with being busted by this guy, it's a different story," Napoli said.
Cooper retired on his own terms as GF&P secretary early this January, just a few days before Skjonsberg went public with his complaints against Prieksat. Cooper, who now works as a part-time advisor to Rounds on natural-resource issues, had been Prieksat's predecessor as senior resident agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Pierre.
In fact, Cooper was an established federal agent in Pierre who helped guide Prieksat after he joined GF&P as a conservation officer in 1980. Cooper later helped Prieksat land a job as deputy U.S. marshal, recommended him for a law-enforcement job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service job and helped with his training.
Cooper wouldn't comment on Prieksat's handling of the elk-hunt investigation or on the governor's actions against the agent. But he did say that Prieksat was an accomplished enforcement agent who has always struggled with his relations with the public.
"The hardest part about Bob from the beginning was the manner in which he talked to people and approached people," Cooper said. "It has always been a problem."
Bear Country USA bust
Kevin Casey, one of a group of family members who own Bear Country USA, said Prieksat used abusive-and-overzealous tactics in pushing federal charges against Bear Country. After a multi-year investigation by Prieksat, Casey and his brother, Brendan, pleaded guilty last year in federal court of illegally selling black bear gall bladders and buying and transporting grizzly bears.
The Caseys said they weren't aware that they were violating the law when they sold the gall bladders and bought the grizzly bears. But they paid more than $50,000 in fines and restitution. The two brothers also received one year of probation.
When he handed down the sentence last October in Rapid City, U.S. District Judge Richard Battey praised the Casey family as good citizens and said he didn't consider the brothers to be criminals. Battey also said the case against them probably never should have been brought to court.
"Sure, they committed a crime, but it's a crime that has no moral turpitude to it," Battey said.
With legal fees, the case put together by Prieksat cost the family more than $100,000, Kevin Casey said. Casey, who had previously declined interview requests on the case, said he decided to speak out when Prieksat became the center of public criticism over his law-enforcement style.
Casey said Rounds and Skjonsberg were right to worry that Prieksat's style would reflect poorly on the image of state conservation officers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also should think about that, Casey said.
"Not only is he making a bad name for the Game, Fish & Parks, but in my opinion, he's giving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service a terrible name," Casey said. "I was really hesitant to work with other Fish and Wildlife Service agents after my experience with Mr. Prieksat. I'm now learning that the other agents in the organization are nothing like him."
Casey and Bear Country are considering a lawsuit against Prieksat over comments he made about the drive-through wildlife park. They believe Prieksat defamed the business by comparing it to a puppy factory in a Rapid City Journal news story last June. That reference wrongly implied that Bear Country treated its animals inhumanely and was breeding bears like a mass-produced commodity, Casey said.
Casey said it was particularly out of line for Prieksat to make the comment after the family had already pleaded guilty.
"The thing that really got us was that we thought we were dealing fairly and honestly in pleading guilty to our charges and admitting that we did wrong," Casey said. "But after we pleaded was when Mr. Prieksat decided to come out in the paper with his famous 'puppy mill' quote. He blatantly defamed Bear Country there."
Recent news reports of complaints about Prieksat's demeanor were consistent with the agent's behavior in the Bear Country case, Casey said.
"We're kind of pleased at long last that everybody else is standing up to his bullying tactics," Casey said." It shows how this agent pushes the letter of the law to the limit, treating everybody like criminals. I mean, he had me thinking I was a criminal for four years."
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or [email protected].
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/04/08/news/top/news01.txt
Three cases ignited firestorm over federal game warden
By Kevin Woster, Journal staff
Three high-profile legal cases in western South Dakota were key factors in shaping the well-publicized campaign by Gov. Mike Rounds and his chief of staff to oust federal game warden Bob Prieksat.
Prieksat, a three-state supervisory agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Pierre, was the lead investigator in a federal case that cost Bear Country USA and two members of its family partnership more than $100,000 in fines, restitution and legal fees.
Prieksat also was the man who slapped the handcuffs on a Harding County coyote hunter in a 2003 aerial-hunting case that angered the local sheriff and helped set off a ranch-country protest that closed about 4 million acres of land to hunting.
And the controversial agent known for his rigid law-enforcement style also led a 2003 investigation aimed at bringing criminal charges against state Game, Fish & Parks Department Secretary John Cooper and hunting partner Eric Washburn, a former aide to U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, in connection with a Black Hills elk hunt that fall.
The Cooper investigation ended without criminal charges, but Cooper and Washburn agreed to give up the process meat from the two elk they shot during the hunt. And a few weeks after that, Gov. Mike Rounds and his chief of staff, Rob Skjonsberg, met with Prieksat's regional supervisor to ask that Prieksat be reassigned.
Prieksat, who earned conservation-officer-of-the-year honors as a GF&P employee in the 1980s, survived the January 2004 meeting with his job intact. But he also worked under the critical eye of Rounds and Skjonsberg, who finally went public with their case against the agent in January.
Skjonsberg ordered GF&P conservation officers — a number of whom defend Prieksat off the record — to stop working with the agent except in special instances approved by current GF&P Secretary Jeff Vonk. And Rounds and Skjonsberg again asked Fish and Wildlife regional law-enforcement supervisor Gary Mowad of Denver to reassign Prieksat.
Mowad defended Prieksat as a top-flight field agent with a clean service record. But he also said he hoped that the dispute with the governor's office could be settled.
This time, Rounds and Skjonsberg were joined in their criticism of Prieksat by dozens of hunters and landowners who claim to have been the victims of overzealous law enforcement and bullying tactics. With signed statements outlining their complaints, that group has sought attention from the news media and Prieksat's supervisors with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Skjonsberg met last month in Pierre with a Fish and Wildlife Service official from Washington, D.C., and expects a response from the agency within 60 days. Whatever that means for Bob Prieksat's future, his past involvement in the Janvrin, Cooper and Casey cases is seen by some as a clear connection to the unusual involvement of the governor and this chief of staff.
State Sen. Bill Napoli of Rapid City, a frequent Rounds critic, noted that the governor's office didn't go after Prieksat until after the agent caused trouble for people with political connections, in particular Cooper.
"People I've talked to said it was only a matter of time before he (Prieksat) would get to the wrong person," Napoli said. "He messed with the wrong guy when he tried to arrest Cooper and that bunch — which probably should have happened, I don't know. But he got so far out of control that he busted the wrong guys."
Rounds and Skjonsberg deny that Prieksat's investigation of Cooper or the other high-profile cases was their motivation for taking on Prieksat in public. Rounds also said he wasn't intervening on behalf of family members or close friends.
"There was no one single issue," Rounds said. "It was a preponderance of incidents that have occurred over an extended period of time, more than three years, that showed an extremely aggressive and what we consider to be inappropriate approach to the enforcement of game laws."
Few incidents could equal the Harding County case, the Bear Country charges and the investigation of Cooper and Washburn for the public attention they drew, or their likely impact on the state challenge of Prieksat that exists today
Arrest and lockout
Harding County Sheriff Bill Clarkson said he wasn't surprised when he heard three months ago that Gov. Mike Rounds wanted to oust Prieksat.
"I was not surprised at all, because I've dealt with him up here," Clarkson said. "And I just think the way he handled things here was all wrong."
In March of 2003, Prieksat arrested Harding County rancher Jerry Janvrin for illegal aerial hunting in the killing of two coyotes. Clarkson said he learned of the arrest when he got a telephone call from Janvrin, who was handcuffed and in a vehicle with Prieksat and another enforcement agent headed for Rapid City.
Clarkson was angry that he wasn't involved in or notified of the arrest and believed there was no reason for Janvrin to be handcuffed and hauled away.
"Jerry is one of those guys I could have called on the phone and told him to be at the courthouse in Rapid City at 1 p.m., and he would have got in the pickup and drove down there," Clarkson said. "Prieksat and somebody else came to the calving barn and took Jerry out in handcuffs, for two misdemeanors."
Clarkson said he made that point to Prieksat by telephone after the arrest.
"I said, 'You should call when you come in my county. This is my county, and you talk to me first,'" Clarkson said. "He said, 'I can go anywhere, anytime and do anything I want.'"
Janvrin paid a $2,000 fine after a federal jury found him guilty on one of two charged counts of violating airborne hunting laws. He declined comment for this story. Prieksat has consistently rejected interview requests.
Some critics argue that Prieksat's handling of the Janvrin case sparked the landowner protest, now called the South Dakota Lockout, which then spread to affect GF&P.
"We feel like we're getting drug into the fracas," GF&P official Emmett Keyser of Pierre told the Journal in October of 2003. "And we're kind of innocent bystanders."
But Clark Blake, a rancher and aerial hunter from Camp Crook, said GF&P officers called Prieksat in on the Janvrin case, then tried to step away from their responsibility. Blake said the governor's attacks on Prieksat appear to be aimed at least in part on diverting attention from GF&P policies and conservation officers who often worked with and supported the federal agent and his tactics.
"I think Game, Fish & Parks has been using Prieksat to do their unpleasant arrests," Blake said. "On two separate occasions, I've heard (GF&P official) Art Smith refer to Prieksat as 'our enforcement guy.'"
Smith denies ever saying that. Prieksat takes the lead role in aerial hunting investigations because that's the responsibility of federal wildlife agents, Smith said.
"I have never referred to Bob as 'our enforcement guy,'" Smith said. "He is the enforcement person for the federal Airborne Hunting Act, so it's appropriate for him to be involved."
Blake said many state conservation officers stick up for Prieksat and appear envious of his ability to operate beyond the confines of state policies and politics. He said Rounds should spend at least as much time fixing GF&P and its relationship to landowners as he does criticizing Prieksat.
"I guess as long as I follow the law, which I try to do, Bob Prieksat isn't the problem," Blake said. "The problem is Game, Fish & Parks has all these regulations that can be really hard to follow. If we violate any of those little requirements, they turn it over to their enforcement guy, Bob Prieksat, and we end up in federal court."
Cooper's elk hunt
GF&P Secretary John Cooper didn't end up in federal court in 2003 after Prieksat's investigation into his elk hunt with former Senate aide Erick Washburn. But Cooper was the subject of a series of news stories and calls for his resignation.
Cooper and Washburn, a resident of the Washington, D.C., area, hunted together in October 2003 in a Black Hills elk season open only to residents of the state. But Washburn previously had been granted special residency status by former Gov. Bill Janklow, who wanted to thank the aide for work on South Dakota issues in Congress.
Cooper said at the time that neither he nor Washburn violated any laws in the hunt. And in late November 2003, he announced that the U.S. attorney's office was dropping the investigation and would not bring charges.
Washburn and Cooper had to forfeit the processed meat from the elk they shot, however. And the incident prompted extensive off-the-record sniping at Cooper by GF&P employees. Napoli made his criticism public, asking for Cooper's resignation or termination by Rounds — a request the governor rejected.
Cooper critics speculated that he was angry at Prieksat over the investigation and that his anger spread to the governor's office and inspired the move against Prieksat, a charge that Rounds and Skjonsberg deny.
Napoli said the state should have long ago dealt with Prieksat's apparent lack of common courtesy in dealing with the public. He said state legislators knew about Prieksat after Janvrin told the story of his arrest to members of the Appropriations Committee.
But it was Cooper's situation that finally prompted the governor's office to get involved, Napoli said.
"Rounds was willing to ignore the bottom dwellers. He was willing to ignore the middle people and even businesses at the top. But when his own guy gets threatened with being busted by this guy, it's a different story," Napoli said.
Cooper retired on his own terms as GF&P secretary early this January, just a few days before Skjonsberg went public with his complaints against Prieksat. Cooper, who now works as a part-time advisor to Rounds on natural-resource issues, had been Prieksat's predecessor as senior resident agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Pierre.
In fact, Cooper was an established federal agent in Pierre who helped guide Prieksat after he joined GF&P as a conservation officer in 1980. Cooper later helped Prieksat land a job as deputy U.S. marshal, recommended him for a law-enforcement job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service job and helped with his training.
Cooper wouldn't comment on Prieksat's handling of the elk-hunt investigation or on the governor's actions against the agent. But he did say that Prieksat was an accomplished enforcement agent who has always struggled with his relations with the public.
"The hardest part about Bob from the beginning was the manner in which he talked to people and approached people," Cooper said. "It has always been a problem."
Bear Country USA bust
Kevin Casey, one of a group of family members who own Bear Country USA, said Prieksat used abusive-and-overzealous tactics in pushing federal charges against Bear Country. After a multi-year investigation by Prieksat, Casey and his brother, Brendan, pleaded guilty last year in federal court of illegally selling black bear gall bladders and buying and transporting grizzly bears.
The Caseys said they weren't aware that they were violating the law when they sold the gall bladders and bought the grizzly bears. But they paid more than $50,000 in fines and restitution. The two brothers also received one year of probation.
When he handed down the sentence last October in Rapid City, U.S. District Judge Richard Battey praised the Casey family as good citizens and said he didn't consider the brothers to be criminals. Battey also said the case against them probably never should have been brought to court.
"Sure, they committed a crime, but it's a crime that has no moral turpitude to it," Battey said.
With legal fees, the case put together by Prieksat cost the family more than $100,000, Kevin Casey said. Casey, who had previously declined interview requests on the case, said he decided to speak out when Prieksat became the center of public criticism over his law-enforcement style.
Casey said Rounds and Skjonsberg were right to worry that Prieksat's style would reflect poorly on the image of state conservation officers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also should think about that, Casey said.
"Not only is he making a bad name for the Game, Fish & Parks, but in my opinion, he's giving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service a terrible name," Casey said. "I was really hesitant to work with other Fish and Wildlife Service agents after my experience with Mr. Prieksat. I'm now learning that the other agents in the organization are nothing like him."
Casey and Bear Country are considering a lawsuit against Prieksat over comments he made about the drive-through wildlife park. They believe Prieksat defamed the business by comparing it to a puppy factory in a Rapid City Journal news story last June. That reference wrongly implied that Bear Country treated its animals inhumanely and was breeding bears like a mass-produced commodity, Casey said.
Casey said it was particularly out of line for Prieksat to make the comment after the family had already pleaded guilty.
"The thing that really got us was that we thought we were dealing fairly and honestly in pleading guilty to our charges and admitting that we did wrong," Casey said. "But after we pleaded was when Mr. Prieksat decided to come out in the paper with his famous 'puppy mill' quote. He blatantly defamed Bear Country there."
Recent news reports of complaints about Prieksat's demeanor were consistent with the agent's behavior in the Bear Country case, Casey said.
"We're kind of pleased at long last that everybody else is standing up to his bullying tactics," Casey said." It shows how this agent pushes the letter of the law to the limit, treating everybody like criminals. I mean, he had me thinking I was a criminal for four years."
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or [email protected].
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/04/08/news/top/news01.txt
