Posted on 01/27/2003 1:25:59 PM PST by Spiff
By Tim Steller
© 2003 Arizona Daily Star
A National Park Service ranger cited militia leader Chris Simcox Sunday for carrying a loaded weapon and operating without a permit at Coronado National Memorial in southeastern Arizona.
The chief ranger at the park south of Sierra Vista, Thane Weigand, said it appeared Simcox and William Dore were conducting a patrol of the border. "They were doing a special activity inside the park that's not sanctioned by the park," Weigand said.
Simcox, founder of the Tombstone group Civil Homeland Defense, has been conducting citizen patrols of the border area, but he said that's not what he was doing Sunday afternoon. He said he was simply hiking with Dore.
They were driving along Border Road when they came to a fence with a sign that said no vehicles were permitted, Simcox said. So they parked the van and walked past the fence along the road, not knowing the fence was the park boundary, Simcox said.
"Next thing I know, there's somebody waiting in the bushes for us," Simcox said.
It was a park ranger, who said she had been watching the pair, knew who they were and what they were up to, Simcox said. He and Dore were detained for about 3 1/2 hours, and some belongings were seized, Simcox said. Those belongings included a scanner, two two-way radios, his camera, a cell phone and his pistol.
Weigand said the charges against Simcox and Dore are misdemeanors.
Serves him right for breaking the law, and for being a loon. Thanks for posting this good news.
The tallest tree is usually the first to feel the axe...
Bad border policy breeding violence
Respect for law crumbling into vigilante mind-set
Nov. 20, 2002
Disregard for law is spreading along the border.
It isn't the just the steady stream of illegal immigrants. Or the drug dealers. Or the smugglers who often leave their human cargo to die in Arizona's great deserts.
Disregard for the law is oozing into rural America.
In Tombstone, the temptation to play Wild West vigilante has become a Front Page crusade for the owner of a weekly paper called the Tombstone Tumbleweed.
Chris Simcox, who bought the paper last May, recently issued "A Public Call to Arms" to address the "invasion" by those who cross the border illegally from Mexico. He hosts militia recruitment meetings at which people who disagree with him are not welcome.
You could write it off as Cowboy Campy run amok. Simcox does, after all, adorn the paper's masthead with a picture of himself as a 6-year-old wearing a big cowboy hat and holding an even bigger rifle.
But this former California schoolteacher sounds dead serious about what he calls his "patriotic duty" to "help create homeland security."
Simcox says his efforts to create a border militia have put about 50 people on weekly patrols. They are armed and ready to use "civil police tactics" if they meet resistance.
They may be well-meaning.
But they have made themselves part of the problem.
You don't defend the United States by declaring that law enforcement is ineffective and forming your own militia. You don't demonstrate your patriotism by sidestepping the mechanisms in place to work within the system.
And you don't put lives in danger to make a point.
Armed civilians are no match for hardened drug dealers, people smugglers or terrorists. Nor are gun-toting vigilantes - who view anybody crossing the border illegally as, in Simcox's words, a "potential enemy" - the right people to challenge economic refugees who come here only because they know there are jobs waiting.
This problem won't be solved by anyone taking the law into his or her own hands.
But this desperate plea from rural Arizona should not be ignored.
Politicians in Washington have to stop shirking their duty to reform the current immigration non-policy. It has led to increasing numbers of deaths along the border, and to a growing lack of respect for law enforcement on both sides of the line.
Source: http://www.arizonarepublic.com/opinions/articles/1120wed2-20.html
Huh? LOL!
Cultural Jihad quotes from the article: "So they parked the van and walked past the fence along the road, not knowing the fence was the park boundary, Simcox said."
And then responds with: "File this under 'La ignorancia de la ley no es ninguna excusa'." ("ignorance of the law is no excuse")
Sorry CJ, but the time-worn principle that "ignorance of the law is no excuse", is not an open-ended principle without limits. The other edge of that same sword is the 14th Amendment principle of "due notice", the requirement for the government to provide adequate warning of limits, boundaries and requirements of law and regulation. And in the present case, that means where crossing a property line can incur certain statutory penalties, those boundaries must be clearly marked.
Moreover, the seizing of personal effects, unrelated to the crime in question, or any other crime, is a violation of 5th and 14th Amendment due process requirements.
In addition, the fact that Ranger was lying in wait to ambush these two and admitted that "she had been watching the pair, knew who they were and what they were up to", is a clear admission that she had singled them out in order to put a stop to, what is otherwise, a perfectly legal activity, that of private border patrol. Such discriminatory prosecution (even where there is an actual violation of law) is, again, a violation of 5th Amendment right of due process.
I fully support what the armed private border patrol is doing in Arizona and I support their efforts to overcome government harassment and opposition to their exercise of their constitutional rights.
God bless our brave, patriotic private border patrols.
--Boot Hill
Well, I must say, you got that right. After 20 years of attack on our borders, our sovereignty, and our nation, it's about time someone, anyone does something.
Mr. Simcox, owner of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, said the armed militia members would patrol public land to detain illegal aliens every weekend until Mr. Bush puts U.S. troops on the border to stop the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming into the state each year and the resulting vandalism of public and private land.http://www.digitalanarchy.org/home/article.asp?idx=120
"I am not afraid to carry this on to state lands that belong to every citizen. It's our land," he said. "I'm not afraid to step on that land and do the same thing, and I challenge my government to come and arrest me. We are not crazies, we're concerned citizens we are responsible people."http://www.digitalanarchy.org/home/article.asp?idx=120
The leader of Tombstones fledgling citizens militia organziation intends to conducts its operations on public lands, patrol routes leading to water stations and have volunteers apply for state-issued concealed weapons permits.'We are stepping onto public lands, and I dare the government to come and arrest 50 people,' said Chris Simcox leader of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, a weekly newspaper, and organizer of a citizens militia he now calls the Civil Homeland Defense.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/news/800010/posts
Interesting, aint it CJ?
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