Ask Florida to End Costly Sting Operations Against Arrowhead Collectors
- by: Susan V
- recipient: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
For two years Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission conducted a sting operation that cost taxpayers more than $130,000 and led to the suicide of one of the suspects. The crime: collecting and selling artifacts.
Among the 14 rounded up in Operation Timucua were men with clean criminal records, including a 74-year-old retired university professor and a 24-year-old military veteran.
Those who were home during the early morning hours on the day of the raid awoke to a loud pounding on their doors by officers in swat-team attire, with weapons drawn. One who wasn’t home later told how his wife had been terrorized.
As it turns out, most of the defendants weren’t disturbing protected historical sites the operation was supposedly set up to protect. Even though they were operating under a law that allows taking out-of-context artifacts they were targeted, nevertheless, to send a message to other collectors.
The new laws preserving archeological sites are important, but they don’t justify these kind of over-the-top tactics. As a former archaelogical society member and long-time beach artifact collector myself, I am personally concerned.
Ask Florida’s FWC to find a way to work with collectors to preserve archeological sites and stop these terrorizing tactics.
We, the undersigned say preserving archeological sites does not justify the actions taken against these collectors.
Reporting the story, the Tampa Bay Times explains that some of the collectors targeted in the operation clearly understood the difference between taking an artifact from a river bottom and digging at significant historical sites. They were adhering to conditions of the Isolated Finds Program that gives collectors the OK to take artifacts from river bottoms and other places where they have become dislodged from original locations.
But in its news conference about the sting operation, the FWC didn’t make that distinction. Former state archaeologists and other leading archaeologists and state anthropologists say they see no harm to the legal form of collecting artifacts. And not only are many collectors doing no harm, in some cases they are the ones helping archaeologists find important sites.
Furthermore, adds the Times, the state didn’t even want thousands of found artifacts collectors had reported. One former president of the state Archaeological Society says the state already has more than it can curate, and he suggests that archaeologists work with the public to help obtain more information. Another former president says terrorizing people the way the FWC did -“busting into homes with no warning, treating them like drug dealers” - is “terrible.”
Because of the operation, families were terrorized and faced financial ruin. One man lost a marriage and another his life. There has to be another way to discourage disruption of historic sites.
We request that Florida put an end to end these over-the-top sting operations against arrowhead collectors.
