Posted on 01/30/2003 10:27:53 AM PST by joesnuffy
Simcox, companion cited by park ranger
By Tim Steller © 2003 Arizona Daily Star From the StarNet archives: a profile of militia leader Chris Simcox.
The leader of a Tombstone citizens' patrol group faces three misdemeanor charges after he walked armed into Coronado National Memorial near the Arizona-Mexico border Sunday.
Chris Simcox was with a companion when they walked onto National Park Service land south of Sierra Vista and were stopped by a ranger.
Simcox said the two were simply hiking, but Chief Ran-ger Thane Weigand said it appears that they were conducting a border patrol operation without permission.
A ranger detained Simcox and his friend, William Dore, for more than three hours before citing both of them, they said. Simcox was charged with carrying a loaded weapon inside a national park, operating without a special use permit and interfering with a law enforcement function. Dore was cited for operating without a special use permit.
Rangers confiscated equipment Simcox was carrying: his pistol, two two-way radios, a police scanner, a cellular phone and a digital camera. "It's evidence of him conducting a non-permitted activity in the national park," Weigand said.
Simcox, who owns the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper, leads one of at least three citizens' groups in Southern Arizona that patrol the border, sometimes armed, in search of illegal border-crossers. Simcox's group, called Civil Homeland Defense, patrolled on Saturday but not Sunday, he said.
Simcox says he and Dore were driving west along the border road when they came to a fence and gate beyond which, a sign said, vehicles were not permitted. So they decided to park and walk in. Simcox says he would not have gone in armed had he realized the fence marked the Coronado National Memorial's boundary.
* Contact Tim Steller at 434-4086 or steller@azstarnet.com.
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Please Mr. Ranger, what activities are permitted on a park? Is everything prohibited that is not explicitly permitted, or do we have the right to do anything we wish, except for those things that are explicitly prohibited?
It is disgusting that Simcox appears to have been targeted by the Feds. If the government was protecting our borders there would be no need for patroitic people like Simcox to take matters in to their own hands.
Actually, it was Glenn Spencer of American Border Patrol that this chick was gunning for. If you read the interview transcript or watch it you see that she kept saying she had people from ABP when, instead, she had Chris Simcox from Civil Homeland Defense.
Thanks for reminding me, will do.
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