Intensified law enforcement at campgrounds around Aspen last month has triggered complaints of illegal search-and-seizures and youth profiling.
Kevin Walczak, 26, said he and his girlfriend were sitting around a campfire enjoying a few beers and a smoke when U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers rolled up and turned a peaceful time in the woods into an interrogation.
“We had a roll-your-own cigarette. That’s what we smoke. We were sharing it, passing it back and forth. All it was is tobacco. Suddenly two officers walk into our campsite, don’t introduce themselves, shine flashlights so we couldn’t see them, we were blinded by the light more or less,” he said. “They asked about our cigarette, wanting to know what it was and they asked to look into our tobacco pouch.”
The officers eventually found what appeared to be a marijuana pipe in the cup holder of one of Walczak’s camping chairs. They then went and searched both Walczak’s and his girlfriend’s vehicles and allegedly found another marijuana pipe.
“They invaded our camp,” said Walczak, adding that he didn’t think he or his girlfriend had ever given consent for the officers to search the campsite or their vehicles. They both ended up getting cited for possession of marijuana, a federal offense. He said neither of the alleged marijuana pipes contained anything in them other than white ash.
The scene is like several that played out over the first week of September when the Forest Service sent extra law enforcement officers into the Aspen area to better patrol campgrounds during the busy Labor Day weekend, which included the Jazz Aspen Snowmass festival, the Motherlode volleyball tournament and other events.
“There will be times where because we have such a small staff that other officers from other forests will come for short periods of time and then move on to the next area,” said White River National Forest Service Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams. “This was planned during Jazz Aspen Snowmass because we knew we’d be getting a tremendous amount of people camping where they aren’t supposed to be camping.”
There are only three full-time law enforcement officers to cover the entire 2.5 million acres of the White River National Forest, the most-visited forest in the nation.
Dave Closson, acting law enforcement patrol director for the forest, said there were five law enforcement officers in the Aspen area over Labor Day weekend.
Both Closson and Fitzwilliams said there is no organized effort to ramp up campground enforcement and that an uptick in forest warnings and citations between 2007 and 2009 is only because the White River was understaffed in 2007. There was just one law enforcement officer patrolling the forest a few years ago and in late 2007/early 2008 two more officers joined the forest to bring the total to three.
“There is no major push, no major emphasis as far as a crackdown any more than there always has been,” Fitzwilliams said Monday. “Law enforcement has assured me that’s just not how they’re doing their business. At the same time, when they see illegal activity they have an obligation to do something about it.”
“We just deal with what we see,” added Closson.
Forest Service officials said they had been given consent to conduct their searches.
Fitzwilliams, who took charge of the White River National Forest less than two months ago after transferring here from Oregon, said he has only received one formal complaint about how law enforcement officers have treated citizens.
That complaint came from Aspen resident Traci Clapper, 20, whom two law enforcement officers pulled over on Independence Pass on Sept. 4. What started out as a traffic stop turned into a search of her car. Again, a marijuana pipe was found.
“Officer Williams illegally pulled me over then proceeded to illegally search my vehicle. And in doing so Officer Williams clearly, blatantly and knowingly violated my Fourth Amendment right,” Clapper wrote in her official complaint.
Clapper claims the officers informed her she had been pulled over for not wearing a seat belt. When she informed them that in Colorado motorists cannot be stopped for a seat belt violation, Clapper claims the officers changed their story to say she had been pulled over for speeding, not the seat belt violation.
In the end, she was not given a citation. Clapper was instead given a written warning for “no seat belt” and “para” — presumably meaning drug paraphernalia. She clarified that the pipe was a friend’s; she goes into the forest to hike and rock climb.
Even though Clapper was let go with a written warning, she has requested a written apology from the officer and his supervisor. Her mother, Pitkin County Commissioner Patti Kay-Clapper, has also taken up her cause. Based on the stories she’s heard, Kay-Clapper believes officers are unfairly targeting young people.
“I would not have a problem if these enforcement officers were up there with good cause. If we had an issue such as loud noise or litter or disrupting the peace, it might be different. But there’s no history of incidents up there that suggests we need this level of enforcement,” Kay-Clapper said. “Isn’t there something better for them to be doing? Who were these individuals bothering? Were they bothering the forest? Were they bothering others in the forests? Sometimes education and just talking to people is a better way to manage the forest than to issue citations that may come down to haunt these young people later on in their lives.”
Possession of marijuana on federal land is punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of $1,000 on the first offense; a 15-day mandatory sentence that can be extended to two years in prison for a second offense; after that, perpetrators can receive a 90-day to three-year prison term, and a $5,000 fine. Closson, however, said many of the possession tickets the Forest Service writes will be automatically dismissed if the violators pay the fine, mail it in and plead “no contest.” First-time offenders, Closson said, should be able to keep the citations off of their records.
Kay-Clapper has complained to Fitzwilliams and filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. Department of Agriculture asking for the number of citations in this area, their type and the names of the officers involved. The requests were made in her capacity as a parent, she said, and not her position as a commissioner. Kay-Clapper did, however, fax her daughter’s formal complaint from her office at the county and she used a cover sheet with the county's insignia on it.
The Forest Service provided statistics to the Aspen Daily News that show drug possession citations and warnings have increased in the area the last three years. But the number of citations (warnings excluded) dropped in Aspen from 37 in 2008 to 28 in 2009, from seven to five in the Sopris District, and from 44 to 37 forest-wide (see chart).
