Wildlife SWAT Unit Runs Over Law

Insight on the News, July 3, 2000 by Kelly Patricia O'Meara

A North Carolina exotic-meat business was forced to close by overzealous federal and state officials, who don't seem to understand what the law is regarding exotic game.

On Nov. 15, 1995, agents from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, or NCWRC, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service arrived at Earl Peck's home-based business in Rocky Mount, N.C., to discuss whether he might be in violation of state wildlife laws by selling game from other jurisdictions where its commerce is legal. Peck invited the agents in, explained that through his exotic-meat business, International Home Cooking, he did indeed sell some black-bear meat purchased from a legal out-of-state distributor. So was the matter resolved amicably?

Alas, not really. In a perfect world of courtesy and civility, where innocence is presumed until guilt is proved, the problem might have been played out as imagined above. But Peck was not afforded the benefit of the doubt and the events that unfolded that fall day have put him out of business and left him near bankruptcy. Indeed the investigation and raid resembled something out of television's popular Cops series, where SWAT teams and siege tactics are the norm. Here is what actually happened to this respected citizen and businessman.

In June 1995, North Carolina Wildlife Officer Charles Shaver, posing as a customer, purchased 40 pounds of black-bear meat from Peck. Through DNA testing at a federal laboratory it was confirmed that the meat Peck sold Shaver was black bear. According to Peck, during the "buy" Shaver asked if it "is legal to purchase bear" and Peck responded in the affirmative, explaining: "I get it from my [out-of-state] distributors."

When Peck returned home, he thought again about Shaver's question and immediately contacted one of his California distributors to confirm the legality of the sale. The distributor reassured Peck that not only was the sale legal, but the meat was government-inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA.

Nearly six months elapsed before Shaver contacted Peck in November 1995 to arrange a second purchase. Because Peck ran the business from his home, he would take his meat to buyers rather than have them clog the neighborhood with trucks and other traffic. On this occasion he agreed to meet Shaver in the parking lot of a nearby restaurant. Unaware of any crime he might be committing, Peck loaded the bear meat into Shaver's automobile and, just as the undercover officer was preparing to pay Peck, a half-dozen armed law officers sped to the scene. Believing he was being robbed, Peck was pushed against the car and frisked while the entire episode was videotaped.

Peck does not believe he was read his rights, but he does recall that he was handed a search warrant by one of the officers who then instructed him to drive two of the inspectors -- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Special Agent Theodore Curtis and Maj. N. Tyson Laney, chief of law enforcement for NCWRC -- to his home-based business. Eight officers spent hours downloading information from Peck's computer and searching his home, including his bedroom, for evidence about the sale of exotic meats. When the search was concluded, state and federal officials walked away with Peck's business records and nearly $2,000 in various meat products, including the suspect bear meat. Before leaving the bewildered Peck, Curtis warned him that he was facing a $20,000 fine and five years in prison on each count of violating the law.

Despite the dramatic methods used by state and federal wildlife officers to "catch" Peck in perceived criminal activity, no charges were filed against him. Now, nearly five years later, the same state and federal authorities that participated in the raid on his business are stunned that Peck blames them for the loss of his livelihood. And, even more bizarre, the state officials who participated in the raid have a kind of amnesia about which authority, state or federal, initiated the raid.

"I'm not aware," says Col. Roger LeQuire, director of enforcement for the NCWRC, "of any state charges that were ever brought against Mr. Peck." LeQuire tells Insight that "the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service charged Peck with something at one point, but we had minimal input on the initial raid. We didn't seize anything from Mr. Peck. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was working this case and we stepped out and let them handle it because they have much greater resources. I have no idea who brought them into the case, and I don't know what their involvement was -- what they seized or anything." Trying to explain who initiated the raid, LeQuire surmised that it "could be another scenario where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service brought in one of our guys."

According to Mike Elkins, regional director of law enforcement for the South East Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "North Carolina agents came to us for assistance because they had become aware of a company that was selling black-bear meat. We got a search warrant, reviewed the evidence and the U.S. attorney declined to prosecute." In fact, Elkins quoted from a document in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's file on Peck that it was North Carolina Special Agent Shaver who initiated the request for federal assistance -- a fact that LeQuire, as chief law-enforcement officer for the NCWRC, should know.