Enforcement

NEW BEDFORD — NOAA is revamping its fishery enforcement methods after a scathing report by the Commerce Department's inspector general, but the agency is not revisiting past cases for prosecutorial abuse, NOAA chief counsel Lois Schiffer told The Standard-Times Thursday.

Perhaps the biggest change was announced by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco in a press release: In cases before an administrative law judge, the burden of proof in cases of alleged fishery lawbreaking will shift away from the alleged violator and to the government.

The change does not affect catch seizures, which NOAA must justify in federal court, NOAA spokeswoman Monica Allen said.

The proposed change was published in Thursday's Federal Register and will not take effect until after a comment period. But Schiffer said that, in practice, the shift in the burden of the argument will happen now, with pending cases. 

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Dr. Lubchenco’s report to the Inspector General is available online

The report’s appendices are available online

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration yesterday announced a suite of detailed reforms with an eye toward "moving toward an effective enforcement program" for federal fisheries, the agency's chief administrator said.

The agency has been chipping away at longtime patterns of dissonant behavior since January, when a 28-page inspector general's report outlining misconduct, lack of leadership and provocative actions against fishermen and fish brokers dropped with a thud into the lap of NOAA chief administrator Jane Lubchenco.

Yesterday, Lubchenco made no mention of Dale Jones, whose 11-year record heading NOAA law enforcement has become a major distraction to Lubchenco and a bar to rapprochement with a fishing community whose complaints have been corroborated through Inspector General Todd Zinser's investigation and preliminary report.

She did, however, announce a commitment to healing scars from wounds and slights to the fishing industry over many years by agents cited by the inspector general for confusing their "criminal" orientation with the technical and reporting violations of fishermen and dealers.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

Dr. Lubchenco’s report to the Inspector General is available online

The report’s appendices are available online

 

The conduct of enforcement agents for the National Marine Fisheries Service should be a target of more than an audit or a civil inquiry by the U.S. Department of Commerce Inspector General.

It deserves a criminal investigation.

The evidence continues to pile up that the agency, which is under the oversight of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has been functioning as a law unto itself. It is not just a pattern of disproportionate enforcement. It now includes things like unauthorized entry and, most recently, an allegation that agents may have tried to coerce a witness before the start of a trial.

The blatant, ongoing disproportionate enforcement is bad enough. IG Todd Zinser, in a recent report, found that fines and other penalties assessed against fishermen in the New England region were more than double those in other regions of the country.

Read the complete story at The Daily News of Newburyport.

A Gloucester fisherman accused of harassing humpback whales on Stellwagen Bank in 2008 reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors yesterday that will see him fined $200.

Christopher Jacques of Western Avenue pleaded guilty to two violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but avoided what could have been up to $100,000 in fines and a year in jail if he had been convicted at trial.

In March of last year, he was charged with three counts of whale harassment — including hitting two humpbacks with a boat.

"I took the deal," Jacques said yesterday when reached by phone after giving his plea in U.S. district court in Boston. "I wanted to fight it but couldn't take the chance. I am living paycheck to paycheck."

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

The two congressmen who last week grilled federal oceans law enforcement chief Dale Jones about findings of his agency's wrongdoing against the fishing industry during a field hearing at Gloucester's City Hall have stepped up their push for answers — and financial documents.

Mass. 6th District Congressman John Tierney, a member of the congressional oversight Domestic Policy Subcommittee, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, the subcommittee chairman, have demanded that Jones, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Law Enforcement, provide a "full accounting" of all international travel he has taken since 1999 and a "full accounting" of all such travel taken by "other top officials" at OLE over the same time frame.

Read the full story in the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

 

The chairwoman of the House panel that oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration yesterday called for the agency's director of law enforcement to step down in the wake of a scandal over heavy-handed fisheries enforcement.

House Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee Chairwoman Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam) said that NOAA Law Enforcement Director Dale Jones should be at least temporarily relieved of his duties, given questions over whether he may have tried to destroy documents to avoid an even more scathing report from the Commerce Department's top investigator.

"As the top cop at NOAA and a longtime investigator himself, Dale Jones must be acutely aware that shredding documents during a federal investigation raises serious questions about his commitment to a full and fair look at all the facts," Bordallo said at a subcommittee hearing on the issue yesterday. "At a time when transparency and accountability in the way our government operates is of utmost importance, this type of behavior cannot be condoned, and Mr. Jones should step aside until the IG's investigation is completed."

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The latest charges came from Inspector General Todd Zinser, who framed the matter this way:

"I guess what came to my mind … was I wonder what the office of law enforcement would do if a fishing company that they were investigating had done the same thing during the course of their investigation."

Already forced to defend itself from charges of uneven enforcement of the rules, NOAA has another disaster on its hands.

Its director of law enforcement, Dale Jones, is reported to have ordered the shredding of files in his office's keeping after staff from the U.S. Inspector General's Office told him that they were reviewing allegations that NOAA had been heavy-handed and unfair in levying fines and penalties against New England fishermen for alleged violation of regulations.

The new allegations have further undermined NOAA's standing in the eyes of the fishing industry and have done further harm to an agency already under fire.

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The spotlight was cast on the fishing industry last week, with the arrival of a congressional delegation that held a special hearing and the announcement of the settlement of a contentious fine levied against the largest fish auction in Gloucester.

The hearing, led by US representatives John Tierney, Barney Frank, and Dennis Kucinich, focused on alleged mismanagement by top managers of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the nation’s oceans and fisheries.

At the meeting, NOAA’s head, Jane Lubchenco, promised to investigate allegations by US Inspector General Todd Zinser that the agency’s law enforcement arm had acted autonomously while assessing more than $5 million in fines to New England fishermen from 2004-2009.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

Congressman John Tierney is right in demanding the resignation of the federal fisheries official accused of destroying evidence and other abuses.

Dale Jones, who has served as director of law enforcement for the National Marine Fisheries Service over the last decade, is currently the subject of an investigation by the inspector general of the NMFS' parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Tierney, joined by Sen. John Kerry and fellow Congressmen William Delahunt and Barney Frank, on Thursday called for Jones to resign or at least step down while the probe is under way.

"Our fishing families do not deserve to be treated like common criminals as they have been on Mr. Jones' watch," Tierney declared. During Jones' tenure, fines levied against fishermen here in the Northeast have been more than twice those in other areas of the country.

Jones, who honed for his top-level federal law enforcement job serving as police chief of Hagerstown, Md., has stocked his agency with criminal investigators to handle civil, administrative violations. He has also been accused of using the money raised from fines to send himself and members of his staff to conferences in exotic destinations.

Read the complete editorial at The Salem News Online.

Two federal fishery law enforcement agents visited Monte Rome last week at his Intershell speciality seafood distributorship, as Rome prepared to testify as a witness for the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction at the trial scheduled to begin five days later.

Rome was preparing to testify under oath about a conversation he had a number of years ago with Charles E. Juliand, who heads the Office of General Counsel in Gloucester. And Rome said the agents wanted to know what he intended to say in his testimony — specifically about his 4-year-old conversation with Juliand.

One of the agents was James M. MacDonald, special agent, for the Office of Law Enforcement, National Marine Fisheries Service.

Rome said the agents appealed to his "spirit of cooperation. "He was furious, and said, "How dare you come in here and ask me to speak to a federal agent."

The action is drawing questions and fire from state Attorney General Martha Coakley, U.S. Sen. John Kerry and others.

The flashpoint conversation between Rome and Juliand occurred sometime after Juliand in early 2006 had lost a trial in which he attempted to shut down the auction for accepting for sale too much cod. Because the auction dared go to trial and actually won, the case took on a certain legendary status along the waterfront.

Juliand appealed the judge's brooming of his case to the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who reversed the trial judge. The case remained active on appeal until Tuesday when the auction settled all its legal problems without admitting violations.

Last week, Rome was prepared to testify in the latest case against the auction that Juliand — with whom he was having a discussion of federal regulations of fish parts — described Larry Ciulla, president of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction as a "lying piece of scumbag (expletive)."

Rome told the Times that MacDonald and his partner told him, "We understand you said Chuck Juliand said these things about Larry."

Many fishermen have also told the Times and the Inspector General that NOAA's NMFS investigators promised to drop charges for "ratting out" the auction.

Juliand and MacDonald did not return phone calls.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.