Longish, but mildly interesting:
NY, via the Dept. of Env.Cons. - DEC - has a program of obtaining fishing rights from private landowners, to allow the public access to waterways. These easements are then recorded in the deed to the property and are permanent. I live on a popular river for fishing and it is stocked by the DEC, so people believe that gives them the right to fish on my property. When I see this happening, I ask them to leave and I point out some pretty nice public fishing spots downriver.
Last week, I think it was Tuesday, I asked a fisherman to leave. He had parked on my property, right in front of a posted sign, which I found kind of nervy. I gave him directions to the other fishing sites and he left peaceably. On Friday ultimo, two men in an SUV parked along the road, wearing jeans and flannel shirts against the bugs, and with fishing poles in hand, started to walk down my property, ostensibly to go fishing. I asked them to leave. They then stated that they worked for the DEC and they had the right to go fishing here. I said they did not. They asked if I was denying them access. I said I was because there are no fishing rights on my property. At this point, they started flashing badges. I was not impressed for a couple of reasons.
First, I knew for certain that I was right. There are no fishing rights. Second, I've seen people in towns where I lived flash a badge that they carried as, say, sewer inspector, to impersonate police, so I was not going to take that at face value. They offered to show me their DEC identification. I wouldn't know a fake ID from a real one so I was not going to take that at face value. And importantly, this incident is not happening in a vacuum.
The DEC has tried this before. Most recently, they tried to strong arm my mother, who was 76 at the time and a widow, into allowing access to our property to stock the river. In that episode, the DEC stood by and watched as a group of local men, six all told, surrounded my mother in the road and argued and tried to intimidate her, insisting that they had the right to walk on our property. My mother, though, is made of sterner stuff and she told them to go soak their heads. Two years ago, a fellow from the DEC came by to ask for permission to walk upstream to verify the fishing easement map he had was correct, which showed the public access rights terminating above my property line so I KNOW the DEC has information that shows my property as not having fishing access. I was not going to cooperate.
So, they stated they were going to write me a ticket and I could get a lawyer and stand in front of the town judge to resolve the issue. This was going too far, in my estimation. Public access rights is a legal matter, handled through the legal department of the fisheries people. Now, I'm being told I will have to get a lawyer, spend money and time and go to court to prove my case? And as of that moment, I still think that they are trying to muscle me around, use their badges to go fishing.
I called 911 and asked for the NY State Police to come out, because I had two trespassers that would not leave my property. You see, I trust that the NY Troopers and the county sheriffs are professionals. They will come in a marked vehicle and will be wearing a uniform so I know they are who they say they are. They are good people. It took a while but a Trooper came out and started sorting things out. As it turns out, these two men are indeed who they say they are but are on an undercover operation, a sting, in response to a complaint from the last person I asked to leave my property. That was the first I'd heard of any explanation as to why they were really there and as they say, the penny finally dropped. But it took a Trooper to tell me that. They didn't. Had they done that at the start, the Trooper probably would not have been called and I would not have been so suspicious of them.
The DEC people wanted to examine my deed to have me prove to them that there were no fishing rights so I asked my wife to retrieve that from our safety deposit box and off she goes. Meanwhile, they kept trying to hand me a printout of the DEC public maps on their GIS website showing that my property had fishing rights. I refused to take this map from him, explaining that their information was incorrect as my deed would show and nothing they could put into my hand beyond an eminent domain taking would convince me they were right and I was wrong. At this point, their tone changed, and I think it was due to the fact that I was not acting as if I were running a bluff, that I was truly convinced that I was right.
They stated that they would leave their card and that I should scan my deed and e-mail them and that their fisheries legal department would examine the deed. If I was right, no ticket would be issued. I'm thinking, so why wasn't this pursued at the beginning of the encounter, instead of an undercover operation and a ticket? Anyway, they left and five minutes later, my wife comes back with the deed. Figures. OK, I scanned the deed and e-mailed them, pointing out that the tract of land they were about to walk on records no fishing easement. To their credit, the e-mail I received in response was conciliatory. It recognized that their information seemed to be in error and asked me to understand that they were going on the information in their database and they were just doing their jobs. I understood that - they had a GIS map and a human being made a data input error. OK, but when they came here, they were not looking for understanding, they were looking to write a ticket. Leaving that quibble aside, I also can understand that the NY DEC is a big place and apparently, the guy who walked our property a few years ago somehow did not communicate his findings to the right people and there is now a public-facing map that needs to be corrected to avoid future problems. The DEC police said that they would ask to expedite that process. So in the end, I have to give props to the EnCon police for how they responded once they suspected that they might be in error. They could have tried to brazen it out and did not.
Right now, I'm waiting for the fisheries people to contact me. We've had many instances of people trying to force their way onto our property to go fishing. I don't understand it. There are TONS of places that are duly marked as public fishing sites but for some reason, people are adamant about having the right to fish on my property and get belligerent. What's the big deal about going 2 miles down the road, parking in a gravel parking area instead of on my lawn, and fishing where there are trash receptacles instead of throwing beer cans on my shoreline?
Ugh.
Reply With Quote
...Ben
Originally Posted by Kevin
...Ben
...Ben
