According to the Congressional Western Caucus, in February, US Forest Service officers and canine units conducted a raid on the Taos Ski Valley. Multiple tickets were issued for various offenses, including driving with a cracked windshield.
According to the Taos News, it was part of a “saturation patrol,” due to a demand from the Director of the Forest Service Law Enforcement and Investigations, David Ferrell, that officers reach a quota of 100 citations annually.
The Caucus reports of a memo written this past November, in which Southwest Regional Patrol Commander Aban Lucero wrote:
“Understand, Director Ferrell has clearly indicated his expectations of LEOs (law enforcement officers) issuing a minimum of 100 VNs (violation notices) per year. As you can see we have approximately 70 percent who fall below that number…For FY14, I expect these numbers to increase substantially.”
On March 4, the Deputy Director for Law Enforcement emailed patrol commanders that “no quotas are being developed” for violation notices. According to Jeff Ruch, Executive Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the March 4th memo was a “classic cover-your-ass maneuver” that “maintain[s] there aren’t quotas and to ignore the ones that exist.” Similar raids have occurred in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, where Forest Service personnel have been accused of citing residents for minor violations of state law, such as lacking proof of car insurance.
The Caucus members say that “obviously narcotics have no business in our national forests. And we applaud Forest Service officers who risk their safety to protect the public and our treasured landscapes, but the fact that the US Forest Service feels the need to target people for cracked windshields or lack of car insurance to meet an arbitrary quota is ridiculous. The Forest Service has a hard enough time actually managing the forests, and should focus its resources on its actual mission, instead of bullying citizens for minor violations over which the Forest Service has no jurisdiction.”