Hopewell Culture Administrative History

CHAPTER EIGHT
Resource Management and Visitor Protection (continued)

Law Enforcement

Simplicity characterized law enforcement activities during Clyde King's superintendency, and he saw fit to solve his most vexing problems by posting a sign stating monument regulations. In May 1947, King reported, "Much of our trouble comes from three sources: picking flowers and damaging trees, the latter to get sticks for use in picnics; using the river bank as a shooting gallery; and driving cars off the roadways as well as operating bicycles on the mounds themselves." For more serious infractions, King sought close ties with the State Highway Patrol as well as the Ross County Sheriff. [14]

King typically found himself acting as a surrogate parent to rowdy and vandal-prone juveniles. In one instance, he had to inform a scoutmaster that the only reason four scouts did not light a fire on the floor of the picnic shelter was because the boys could not get the firewood to ignite. When another boy ignored King's warnings about riding his motor scooter over the earthworks, King's phone call to the boy's father resulted in never seeing the boy or the machine inside the park again. Sometimes King found himself warning adults to behave themselves. One group that used the picnic area every Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1953 became too loud and intoxicated for a public park. King warned them that another infraction would result in their expulsion, and he promised to have State Highway Patrolmen waiting to arrest them for drunk driving. The warning proved a sufficient deterrent. [15]

King's philosophy of always having a uniformed employee visible to the visiting public worked for more than fifteen years. During his tenure, there were no arrests made and vandalism constituted nothing more than carving initials into wooden picnic tables. King's remedy for miscreant carvings was to scour them out as soon as they were discovered in order to discourage other potential vandals. In March 1962, prior to his transfer, King proudly reported that his watchful method worked well, adding that "law violation was at a minimum here where it was almost impossible to hide from the employee on duty, the occupants of the residence, and the twenty-four-hour vigil of the watchtowers of the Federal Reformatory." [16]

On the eve of King's transfer, theft of two audio speakers from atop the visitor center proved an omen of future depredations. Even with the assistance of the local Federal Bureau of Investigation officers to help solve the theft of government property, increasing visitation and expanded park infrastructure foreshadowed more law enforcement incidents. In the absence of adding more staff, park managers had to rely on Clyde King's method as well as assistance from area federal, state, and local law enforcement officers. [17]

Indeed, the monument lacked any formal law enforcement program for another fifteen years. It was not until the late 1970s that a formal program emerged with the requirement that the chief of interpretation and resource management hold a law enforcement commission. It represented the first full-time staff member to hold such a commission beyond the superintendent. Beginning in 1980, law enforcement appeared as a permanent category in the superintendent's annual report. [18]

What made the program possible was the resolution of the thorny issue of jurisdiction. Because the army paid local farmers for Scioto Valley farmland to form the Camp Sherman Reservation in the late 1910s and early 1920s, the federal reserve had exclusive jurisdiction and could rely on only federal law enforcement officers for assistance. The date used for federal acceptance of exclusive jurisdiction for the 67.50 acres of Mound City Group National Monument was December 2, 1919. [19]

In response to recommendations made by the Department of the Interior's Public Land Law Review Commission in 1971, Director George B. Hartzog, Jr., ordered a systemwide review of jurisdictional status and speedy retrocession of jurisdiction. For Mound City Group, the exercise rekindled interest in changing from exclusive to concurrent jurisdiction. [20] The change could not come soon enough for park managers unable to call upon local assistance and frustrated by lack of concern by the U.S. District Court in Columbus. The court refused to adopt a bail forfeiture or collateral system or even process misdemeanor cases. An exasperated Fred Fagergren, Jr., exerting constant pressure on Columbus court officials, exclaimed "[my] staff is placed in the position of being unable to take effective enforcement action itself and being unable to call for local assistance. While the enforcement problem in this area is negligible, we are remiss in not having a truly effective course of action short of arrest." [21]

Fagergren's concerted pressure on U.S. Attorney William Milligan prompted Milligan to present the dilemma to Chief District Judge Timothy Hogan in Cincinnati. Hogan convened a meeting of district judges to discuss the issue and the group, "with some misgivings" to assume the increased workload, agreed in August 1976 to establish a collateral forfeiture system for all federal non-military installations in the Southern District of Ohio. Referred to as the "ticket system" for minor offenses, Judge Hogan called upon each agency to submit a list of offenses and recommended fines for consideration. Omaha officials sent Interior's Twin Cities field solicitor Elmer T. Nitzschke to Cincinnati to assist the court in establishing the new system that went into effect September 1, 1977. [22]

Public Law 94-458, National Park System Improvement in Administration Act of 1976, directed the Secretary of the Interior to standardize disparate jurisdictional issues in the national park system, and to this end the Midwest Regional Office in 1977 sought to obtain concurrent jurisdiction for fourteen parks in six states. Only Mound City Group had exclusive jurisdiction and to retrocede jurisdiction to the state required both congressional and gubernatorial approval. Success finally arrived on November 15, 1982, when Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes signed the document accepting concurrent jurisdiction at Mound City Group National Monument. The action became official upon its recording in Ross County on January 13, 1983. [23]

With the addition of two parcels of excess Department of Justice land in April 1983, the issue of jurisdiction again emerged for the newly-acquired 52.7 acres. Two years later, officials determined the status of the land to be concurrent jurisdiction. With the acquisition of Hopeton Earthworks, Park Service officials in 1987 again had to consider petitioning the state to change jurisdiction for the new additions. [24]

Addition of Hopeton Earthworks also prompted the need for a park radio system for visitor and resource protection. In January 1981, Fagergren initiated steps with the Denver Service Center to get a radio frequency assigned to Mound City Group. Denver officials recommended sharing the same frequency used by Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area in northeast Ohio to promote further cooperation between the two parks. Citing the lack of an effective communications system as a hinderance to efficient management and park operations, Ken Apschnikat listed a radio system in the park's management efficiency standards in 1983. He envisioned the system could be invaluable not only for park operations, but for partnership relations with surrounding agencies, including helping prison and hospital authorities search for escapees and patients, and responding after-hours to visitor center security alarms. [25]

Approval of sharing Cuyahoga Valley's radio frequency came in the fall of 1983, but the equipment was not installed until early spring 1984. With local availability of LEADS service in January 1987, Ross County Sheriff Thomas L. Hamman extended the service as a courtesy to Mound City Group. [26]

In February 1981, the monument prepared its first official policy on commissioned rangers bearing arms. Recognizing the historical reality of few law enforcement cases, officers were not to be routinely armed. Rangers were instead instructed to use their own discretion concerning arms when answering burglar alarms, transporting prisoners, engaging in hunting patrols, or any other instance when physical harm might threaten. Following park expansion in the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, managers recognized the need for at least one additional staff person with a law enforcement commission to address patrolling for Archeological Resources Protection Act violations, poaching, and illicit drug cultivation. The expanded park rendered the radio system nearly obsolete, with a repeater needed for Seip Earthworks and increasing occurrences of receiving Cuyahoga Valley's routine radio traffic. [27]

Because the radio system did not always operate consistently from the new outlying park units, two cellular telephones were acquired in the fall of 1993. The special purchase obviated any disruption in communication during potential emergencies. [28]

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