Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
A family of three from Marshfield, Massachusetts, could face criminal charges. Their crime? Harassing duck hunters. Police Chief Phil Tavares said his department is seeking a clerk magistrate hearing in order “to determine whether there is probable cause to charge the family members with three counts of hunter interference and two counts of threatening to commit a crime.”
Julie Carreiro said that her family was awakened very early one October morning this fall by the sound of gunfire. She, her husband, and their son ran outside. They found hunters on conservation land that abuts their property. The hunters reportedly told police that the Carreiros had threatened them with physical harm if they didn’t leave. Chief Tavares said, “Members of the family began to use air horns to possibly attempt to scare away the water fowl, which is interference with a hunter.”
Carreiro, who has lived on her property since 1964, said that no one in her family had ever heard or seen hunters on the conservation land until last year. She told CBS News what happened when her family first encountered hunters near their property last year: “The bird shot was raining down on us and we were scared for our lives. We went running into the house ducking for cover.” She claimed that after her family called the police to complain about the hunters, the only thing police did was to “tell the hunters not to aim toward the house…”
Wildlands Trust of Southeastern Massachusetts owns the conservation land that abuts the Carreiro’s property. Public recreation is allowed on the trust’s land—but no hunting is permitted there. According to reports, even though hunting is not allowed on the land—it had not been posted with “no hunting” signs.
Tavares reportedly said that the hunters’ encounter with the Carreiro family is illustrative of “an ongoing, seasonal dispute between hunters trying to exercise their right to hunt off Careswell Street and neighbors who feel their privacy and safety are being violated during water fowl hunting season.”
Tavares wants the court to determine if this was a legal hunt. He said, “You can only hunt on property that’s owned by the Wild Land Trust by permit. They have never issued a permit to hunt there.” He said that there was, however, a “loophole” in the law because no “no hunting” signs had been posted there. Tavares continued, “If it is not posted ‘no hunting’ it’s not enforceable. The hunters have no notice they are not supposed to be there, and to their best belief they were hunting legally.”
Tavares, who comes from a family of hunters, told the Patriot Ledger that “it’s a balancing act between upholding rights and maintaining public safety.” He added, “When I was a kid, we managed to hunt without bothering anyone, but if you’re in a park or playground, even if you’re 500 feet away, it could be a public safety issue. Things that are lawful can still be troublesome and disturbing.”
Note: “The trust has since given authority for the land to be posted, so it is now illegal and enforceable.” (Patriot Ledger)
Even though there weren’t any “no hunting” restrictions posted on the conservation land—the hunters evidently hadn’t been issued a hunting permit. I’d have to ask: How could they have been “hunting legally?”
SOURCES
Marshfield family could face hunter interference charges (Patriot Ledger)
Charges may follow clash with hunters (Boston Globe)
Marshfield family allegedly harassed hunters (Boston Herald)
Couple to be charged for interfering with duck hunters? (CBS News)
New Iconoclast pretty much has it covered…..the hunters were irresponsible. And irresponsible ones make all hunters look bad.
Darren Smith 1, December 16, 2013 at 3:16 pm
Re: 1) above. This is not to say the hunters were guilty or not of a crime, it is whether or not the familty can be prosecuted for interfering with hunting.
If the property is not posted, then they were there legally, since it HAS to be posted.
And yes, they could be charged with a crime, according to the DNR laws.
Not for just interfering with the hunters, but with harassing the wildlife too with the noise….you can not legally ‘harass’ wildlife.
Sounds silly that you can kill wildlife, but can not harass it, but that’s the law.
New Iconoclast:
Re: 1) above. This is not to say the hunters were guilty or not of a crime, it is whether or not the familty can be prosecuted for interfering with hunting.
Crimes have what are referred to elements. Depending on the language of the statute one or all of the elements must be met for probable cause or to convict. The statute in question has an element that the hunting be lawful in order to prosecute under the statute. Since the hunters were not hunting there lawfully, despite that the hunters could not be convicted of the crime, it does not allow the family to be prosecuted for interfering.
A couple of observations for those of you who have, you should excuse the expression, “shot from the hip,” here:
1) There is no mention that the hunters were hunting without a license; just that they didn’t get a permit from the landowner. Since the land wasn’t posted, which it apparently has to be in MA just like it does in MN where I hunt, they were there legally.
2) They were irresponsible. Responsible hunters determine who owns the land, and request permission of the landowner, regardless of the posting status. Even if they assumed it was public land, they should have checked it out.
3) #4 steel shot, falling spent from the sky, (NOT shot at you from the shotgun) is not going to harm you. It might surprise you, it might startle you, and if you’ve never touched a gun and have that kind of political phobia, you might wet your pants. But it won’t hurt you. Again, the hunters were irresponsible.
4) Almost every jurisdiction of which I am aware which permits hunting, including MN, has laws against interfering with hunters. Those laws exist to protect people in the exercise of a legal, enjoyable, and socially useful activity from interference by people like the airhorners in this story – people who aren’t willing to extend to others rights they don’t approve of.
And don’t forget the mass murders almost wholey attributable to PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS. (or withdrawal from)
A bit of an explanation of the POV of the article…
Here is a pretty comprehensive article on “Facing the Real Problem of Gun Violence” in the NYRB by David Cole:
“First, we should abandon efforts to ban assault weapons. Each year murders with all kinds of rifles, including assault weapons, make up only about 3 percent of all homicides in the US. A 2003 study in Jersey City, N.J., found that large-capacity magazines figured in less than 5 percent of shootings. the vast majority of gun injuries and deaths are attributable to ordinary handguns. If pushing for an assault weapon ban will do little to address gun violence but will harden gun owner’s resistance to other reforms, is it really worth the cost?”
And he has some solutions:
OT
Here is a very good article from The New York Review of Books with a nuanced view on gun control that just may have some promise of some movement on reducing gun deaths.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/20/facing-real-gun-problem/?page=1
@andrea olmanson —
If someone is hunting legally (on land that they have permission to hunt, during the hours they are permitted to hunt and in possession of the permits required), IIRC, there isn’t much you can do.
Lucky it wasn’t deer season. Isn’t it against the law to fire a gun within a certain distance from a public street or neighborhood?
So they were awakened by loud noises. Here’s a good idea for how the victim homeowners could address this further, if they want real justice.
I once sued my downstairs neighbors for civil battery because their cuckoo clock chimed every 15 minutes, positioned on their wall but directly below my bed (in the apartment below) and they were very aggressive and refused to move it or turn it off at night.
Really. I really sued my neighbors over this, after trying (unsuccessfully) to stop them from being so damned loud at night (I ignored the blasting of “who let the dogs out” all during football season since I was awake anyway).
I requested the usual request for a nuisance injunction (which is what I really wanted) but I also got creative with the tort of battery, just in case they refused to settle and I would therefore go for everything I could, and I alleged that my eardrums were offensively touched by the sound waves coming from their cuckoo clock all night long.
It helps that Wisconsin’s battery statute criminalizes the imposition of “bodily harm” which is defined as “physical pain or injury, illness, or any impairment of physical condition.” I figured that given what was widely known about the brain changes and physical harms caused by sleep deprivation, it would at least be worth pushing the bounds of what would constitute “impairment of physical condition.”
If it’s a criminal battery to cause “impairment of physical condition” should it not likewise constitute a civil battery to do so?
In any event, the case settled with the defendants agreeing to move their damnable clock. But maybe the victim homeowners in this case could consider suing the horses ar$es who awakened them with their loud gunshots. Battery? Nuisance?
Blouise and Elaine,
Maybe these “legal” hunters should be subjected to breathalyzer tests to see if their conduct is related to some warming juice.
If all have equal rights, then there should be criminal statutes that make it an offence to interfere with bird-watching.
Mike S.,
Who knew? I wasn’t aware of these statutes either…until I researched this story.
Elaine,
You have expanded my knowledge of my own naivete. I was surprised to learn that there are criminal statutes that make it an offense to interfere with hunting.
Blouise,
An excerpt from the Boston Globe article:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/12/charges-may-follow-clash-with-hunters/9CcsFo5NypP07C22XvN5RP/story.html
Sheryll Reichelt, who lives near the Carreiros, said there has been an increase in hunting in the area in recent years, and said many hunters are cutting across private property to get to legal hunting areas.
“If you’re a responsible hunter, you need to know where you’re supposed to be,” Reichelt said. “I have dogs. My neighbors have small children. And we’ve heard shots in our backyard.”
“Now they’re going to go after homeowners for threatening people who have guns right next to their property? That seems ridiculous.”
Elaine,
The Carreiros deny using the air horns and given the fact that the hunters were operating without permits on land where no hunting was allowed (and more than likely knew that from being reported the year before) … I’m going to opt to believe the Carreiros. I do think that town has a very serious problem with their Police Chief.
rafflaw,
The horns of a dilemma are the absolute worst!
Elaine,
You know how dangerous those horns can be!
Blouise,
I had to laugh when I read that the hunters claimed that the Carreiros had threatened them with physical harm. The Carreiros had air horns; the hunters had guns.
The Framers of the Second Amendment were dyslexic and the first draft correctly said: “The Right To Arm Bears…. ” If the bears were armed the woods would be free from unruly predators such as humans bearing arms for the illegal purpose of killing ducks, ducklings or deer. But, God made rifles for a reason and poachers need to be shot. When these poachers go complain about the noise then the cops will know who the poachers are and can bust them for poaching on Sunday. Nuff said.