150 Armed Militia Members Take Over Federal Building

[Benton]

(01-08-2016, 02:40 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: I'm sure the locals are against he Bundy group, but can you please provide a link supporting what I bolded?

Everything I keep finding says that the Hammonds are good people and that's why the locals are standing up for them? what have you seen?

Article below is a good example. The first half of it is about how swell the Hammonds are. It finishes up with the "other" stuff — breaking federal law, trying to scare off hunter's on public property, using sandpaper on skin to discipline a kid.

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2015/12/ranchers_fight_with_feds_spark.html

Quote:In 1999, Dwight Hammond got a stern letter from the local manager for the federal land bureau saying that Steve Hammond had set a fire that spread to bureau ground. The letter said Steve told officials in a subsequent meeting that he "did not believe there was any way to control fire behavior or where it would burn, and that he did not take any action to prevent the fire from burning."

It wasn't the family's first run-in with federal authorities. Five years earlier, Dwight Hammond had been arrested but not prosecuted in a dispute over access to water with managers of the huge Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, one of the nation's premier stops for migratory birds. Heavy equipment from the Hammond ranch obstructed a crew building a fence to keep cattle out.
And in 1999, Steve Hammond confronted hunters on land bureau property near his ranch. The hunters said the next day "he fired several shots from his firearm that the hunting party heard about, but he said he was shooting at rabbits," Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Papagni Jr. said in court recently. Hammond was convicted later of interfering with use of public land.
An attorney for Steve Hammond said in a court filing that his actions "arose out of his belief that there was something wrong with a system that authorized commercial hunting of wildlife that temporarily wandered onto barren public land from private land lush with forage."
In the case of the 1999 fire on bureau land, the federal manager left off by warning the family not to let it happen again.
But lighting public rangeland on fire is exactly what federal prosecutors say the Hammonds proceeded to do.



...



The young man testified how he and his relatives started the blaze. He said in court that Steve Hammond gave him a box of matches on a September morning and told him to "light up the whole country on fire." He testified that his relatives told him later that day to keep quiet about what happened.

In October, prosecutors told a judge the young man had a reason he didn't talk about the arson for eight years.
According to a court document filed by prosecutors in the arson case, the government's witness told federal agents "he feared when Steven Hammond learned he had talked to police, that Steven would come to his front door and kill him."
According to police reports filed as part of the Hammonds' second sentencing, the boy previously had accused Steve Hammond of physical abuse when he was 16 and living with Dwight and Susan Hammond.
He said the Hammonds disapproved that he'd used a paperclip to carve two initials in his chest, according to a Harney County sheriff's deputy who interviewed the boy. The teenager told the investigator "Steve used a very coarse sand paper to sand off the initials," the deputy's report said. The teen said Dwight Hammond left the room but that Susan Hammond stayed, telling him to clean up afterward and "not to have a pity party," the report said.
Steve Hammond was charged with criminal mistreatment, but a diversion agreement got the charge dismissed. He had to take anger management classes, perform 40 hours of community service, and stay away from his nephew.
Dwight Hammond explained it was "decided by the family" to sand off the initials, the investigating deputy wrote. None of the Hammonds would say who did the sanding, the investigator's report said.
Steve Hammond did make one thing clear during their three-hour interview, the investigator wrote, telling the deputy "he did not agree with the government getting involved in family matters."