Thursday, August 7, 2014

Bureau of Land Management (BLM), local law enforcement tensions near breaking point in the West

James Perkins sees the federal Bureau of Land Management more as a belligerent occupying army than a government agency serving U.S. citizens, including those like him in south-central Utah.

Perkins is the sheriff of Garfield County, a rural bastion the size of Connecticut with only 5,500 residents, where 90% of the land is maintained by the BLM. The relationship between local law enforcement and often heavily armed federal officers has always been tense, and now threatens to reach a breaking point.
He and others attribute the deteriorating relations to what he calls BLM's culture of elitism, which provoked Garfield County to join two other Utah counties this year to pass a resolution restricting or banning federal law enforcement within their borders.

"I don't know any sheriff who doesn't want a good relationship with the BLM," he said. "We're a rural agency and we'd like a partnership, but it seems they have a hard time recognizing our authority. They'd rather be independent."

The BLM has faced a string of challenges. In April, it called off a cattle roundup after rebellious Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy was backed by an armed citizen militia that stood its ground with semiautomatic weapons. The BLM looked, in turns, overzealous and ineffectual.

Then, in May, citizens of rural San Juan County in Utah staged a protest, driving all-terrain vehicles into a canyon the BLM had closed to such traffic.

 http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-blm-critics-20140805-story.html

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