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NOTE: "This Sheriff is in violation of his Oath of Office and his
Official Bond is subject to attachment!!"
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
February 14, 2006
NLSA Chairman Helen
Chenoweth-Hage Questions
Sheriff’s Authority to
Deputize Federal Employees
(
Now, in response to the public
outcry, the sheriff attempts to assure his voters that the BLM employees
will only have law enforcement authority on “fee lands”. By that term, we
surmise that he means the grazing allotments appurtenant to rancher’s base
properties. However, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that these “fee
lands” are lands to which the rancher has title proven by an exhaustive
chain of title.
There are still some unanswered
questions the sheriff, district attorney and BLM employees should answer.
1. By what authority does a county sheriff,
who is a state official, grant law enforcement authority to a federal
employee to carry out federal law enforcement on lands within the state of
2.
3.
4. While some federal
employees may cite Article l, Section 8, Clause17 of the U.S. Constitution,
it is well settled law that the land referred to in this section of the
Constitution are federal enclaves. Any lands within the state of
5.
6. How much money is the
Eureka County Sheriff’s Department receiving from the federal government?
How much are they receiving from
It is worthy to note that the
U.S. Constitution authorizes federal law enforcement of only four types of
laws: 1) the counterfeiting of coin, money or value enforcement power; 2)
acts of Piracies and Felonies committed on the high seas; 3) offenses
against the Law of Nations, and; 4) acts of treason involving areas of
federal concern. It must be noted that the Bill of Rights and the Tenth
Amendment specifically reserve to the states all powers not granted to the
federal government. For example, under BLM regulations a citizen may be
imprisoned for up to 11 months and 29 days and fined a fortune WITHOUT A
JURY TRIAL! On the other hand, the Nevada Constitution guarantee’s you a
jury trial, even for a $50 traffic ticket. The Sheriff cannot surrender a
citizen’s rights under the Nevada Constitution by illegally surrendering his
authority to the BLM and Forest Service’s rules and regulations.
Alexander Hamilton,
the most determined nationalist of his time, explained that state
governments, not the federal government, would have the power of law
enforcement and that that power would play a major role in ensuring that the
states were not overwhelmed by the federal government: “There is one
transcendent advantage belonging to the province of the State governments,
which alone suffices to place the matter in a clear and satisfactory light –
I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice.”
Local law
enforcement agencies spend local tax dollars and are directly accountable to
local voters. In contrast, federal law enforcement employees spend from a
vast pool of “other people’s money” and are subject, at most, to very
indirect democratic control.
Recently, in
U.S. v. Lopez, the Supreme
Court reminded Congress that “states possess primary authority for defining
and enforcing the criminal law.” Four short years later the U.S. Supreme
Court repeated this opinion in Prinz
v. U.S. The justices were clear in their findings: “there
has never been a general grant of law enforcement authority to the federal
agencies.”
One key reason for
the growth of the false assertion of federal law enforcement in the federal
land management agencies, which extend beyond our constitutional
protections, has been the gullibility of the media and the public and the
willingness of the federal agencies to assert powers they do not possess.
This assertion has been addressed in Nevada State Law: NRS 200.200 which
states that the impersonation of a law enforcement officer is a Class “D”
felony.
I think it is time
for the sheriff and the BLM to explain themselves further to a very
concerned public and specifically answer the questions outlined above.
Helen Chenoweth-Hage
Contacts: Helen
Chenoweth-Hage, 775.482.4187 Looking at the county web site, the Sheriff of Eureka County is Larry Etter, Phone (775) 237-5330
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