Poachers find safe haven with county’s overload

Spokane County may be Washington’s last best place to be a poacher.

Wildlife enforcement agents continue to write tickets and investigate cases, but some chronic offenders are learning that it pays to plead not guilty and force their cases into the chaos of the Spokane County prosecutor’s office.

The issue signals that the county’s criminal system is a sieve, and that moose, elk and other wildlife resources are not recognized as valuable.

Almost half the more serious wildlife-related cases given to Spokane prosecutors are simply dismissed for lack of attention, according to information from state Fish and Wildlife Department officials and the state court administrator’s office.

The situation isn’t new, state officials say.

Jeff Koenings, Washington Fish and Wildlife Department director, unleashed his frustration at the November Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting in Vancouver.

In his director’s report, he said, “The Spokane County’s prosecutor’s willingness to pursue fish and wildlife prosecutions has become increasingly worse.

“The head of District Court prosecutions asserts a variety of rationalizations to support his total indifference to fish and wildlife cases. He has apparently imparted his values on all of his deputy prosecutors. They fail to communicate with our officers on cases, they are failing to file our complex investigative cases, and now appear to dismiss any case that a defendant pleas not guilty on.”

Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker did not return phone calls on the matter, but I quickly received a call from the man Koenings targeted: the prosecutor’s District Court Supervisor, Brian O’Brien.

What he said should shock anyone who thinks justice is being served in Spokane County.

Roughly 8,000 cases a year flood into the local courtroom that’s dedicated to an array of criminal cases, including those coming from Fish and Wildlife Department agents, he said.

“And we have only two attorneys for that court,” he added.

Prosecutors in other counties were surprised when presented those figures.

“We don’t have the same kind of case load,” said Joseph Jackson, prosecuting attorney in Asotin County, which has a good reputation for dealing with wildlife crimes. He said Fish and Wildlife Department cases are given equal treatment to other criminal cases in Asotin County.

However, he pointed out, “I handle about 500 cases a year.”

Ditto for the two attorneys working the Walla Walla district court, where they handle about 1,000 cases a year.

“We treated fish and wildlife cases exactly the same as any other crime, and spent just as much time on them,” said Dan Gasperino, speaking of his tenure as a prosecutor in Chelan County. “We might not have had as heavy a case load as some counties, but we were never sitting around. Even when the victim is a deer instead of a person … we would charge them with the same priority as any other case.”

Not so in Spokane County, which has gained a reputation for being soft on wildlife crime.

O’Brien said the county district court has one less attorney than when he came to the court in 2000, yet the court he works will have about 1,600 more cases than last year.

The overload for his department, which is funded – or should we say “underfunded” – by the Spokane County Commission, boils the weekly alternatives down to criminal triage, he said.

“The Fish and Wildlife guys work hard,” O’Brien said. “But there are more problems in Fish and Wildlife cases because the court is not as concerned with somebody catching a few fish over their limit as it is with somebody who hits a person in the face with a stick.

“I’m not proud of the records. That’s why I’m trying to do something about it. I want to talk to (Fish and Wildlife administrators) and see what we can do. But the statistics say something. We’re a real big county and we’re very understaffed.”

Fish and Wildlife cases often involve tedious and detailed investigations, much like a murder case, O’Brien said. “That makes them time consuming and tricky to deal with,” he said.

Indeed, all that hard work and detail also contributes to the frustration of wildlife agents who see their cases dropped, sometimes after weeks of investigation.

Capt. Mike Whorton, the Fish and Wildlife regional enforcement supervisor in Spokane, was clearly reluctant to criticize prosecutors this week, but he offered numerous instances for his agents’ concern.

For example, he cited an October case in which a Spokane man was sent to court with 19 charges, including hunting out of season, spotlighting and more. The prosecutors pared them down to two charges. One was dismissed.

“That left one minor wastage charge on a guy who’s a serial poacher,” Whorton said.

“In another case, we got DNA testing for proof in a moose poaching, and even that was dropped,” he said, referring to what he described as “a wad of dismissed cases” on his desk.

Court records show that out of 495 criminal wildlife cases handled by the prosecutors last year, 242 defendants simply paid the fine and only 18 were found guilty. The rest of the cases were basically dropped by the prosecutors.

“Those numbers don’t include our most serious cases because the prosecutors usually don’t even file them,” Whorton said.

The state Attorney General’s office in Olympia has experts in fish and wildlife law who can offer assistance and provide case law and background to prosecutors by request, Whorton said. “And our officers have given the prosecutors their home and cell phone numbers to call at any time.”

But the calls rarely come.

Ron Ozment, Fish and Wildlife Commission chairman, responded to Koenings November report, noting, “If the whole system doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how good a job our people do.”

And wildlife resources are going through the sieve, and down the drain.