ALFRED — A York County man who was ordered by Maine State Police last week to cease harassing an undercover game warden who snared him in a poaching sting investigation acknowledged Friday that he called the warden twice before being sent to jail.
But Richard Sanborn Sr., 57, of Parsonsfield said in an interview at the York County Jail, where he is an inmate, that both calls were accidental misdials and that he never spoke to the agent or even left a message in the calls.
State police gave Sanborn a written cease harassment notice on the evening of May 13, the day he began serving a 22-day sentence. He pleaded guilty April 29 to numerous hunting and game law violations.
Sanborn contends that police issued the notice to retaliate against him for speaking out to the Portland Press Herald for an article that was published on the day he turned himself in at the jail to begin serving his sentence.
“Both of the calls were misdialed calls,” Sanborn said. “I didn’t even get to the answering machine.”
The Maine Warden Service publicized the harassment order in a May 13 press release devoted mostly to criticizing the newspaper’s coverage of undercover operations that targeted poaching suspects in York and Aroostook counties. The release said Sanborn had been served with the notice “for repeated harassing phone calls to the game warden.”
The warden service did not respond to a request for comment Friday on Sanborn’s account of the phone calls.
The Press Herald obtained a copy of the cease harassment notice from state police Thursday through a Freedom of Access Act request. The copy was heavily redacted, so as not to disclose the identity of the recipient or the name of the agent.
Christopher Parr, staff attorney for the state police, asserted that the notice was confidential under Maine law and therefore not a public record, but police were providing a redacted copy nonetheless.
The notice provides no details of the phone calls but warns the recipient that violating its terms within one year may result in being charged with the crime of harassment, a misdemeanor.
Sanborn’s attorney, Roger Brunelle, said he was never notified of the cease harassment notice.
The Maine Sunday Telegram published an initial report May 8 on a raid and arrests by game wardens in the northern town of Allagash. Several of those charged accused undercover agent Bill Livezey of a number of improprieties, including padding evidence, providing alcohol to targets, and inventing events that did not take place.
One woman’s home-canned peaches were improperly seized as evidence and, she says, never returned. Charges were later dropped against the woman, Hope Kelly, but wardens contacted her seasonal employer, resulting in her not being rehired.
The raid that concluded the two-year investigation, dubbed Operation Red Meat, occurred on a winter’s night and involved 30 game wardens and a number of Maine State Police troopers. The raid was filmed by two crews for a reality TV series, “North Woods Law,” which later aired the episode.
Lawmakers who oversee the warden service said Thursday that they intend to hold legislative hearings regarding the backlash related to the undercover investigations in both York County and Aroostook County.
Sen. Paul Davis, R-Sangerville, co-chairman of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee, said he intends to call the leaders of the department and warden service to testify along with Brenda Kielty, the public records ombudsman at the state Attorney General’s Office, to appear before the committee. The newspaper filed three complaints with Kielty after the warden service failed to release documents that were requested under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.
Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos, I-Friendship, who has been calling for an investigation of the undercover warden investigations, said he is concerned that the hearing before the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee may be too limited.
“I’m not sure how broad it is going to be,” Evangelos said.
Evangelos and Rep. Charlotte Warren, D-Hallowell, both wrote a letter to leaders of both houses of the Legislature requesting that the inquiry also be conducted by the Judiciary Committee, of which they are both members.
“Most Mainers would agree that state law enforcement agents should not ply investigative targets with large amounts of alcohol, then encourage them to commit crimes, then arm them with weapons, then commit practices that are generally illegal for the rest of us, all in an effort to spur the investigative targets into illegal action for the purposes of entrapment,” Evangelos and Warren said in their letter on Thursday. “While these highly questionable tactics may be justified in a rare capital case, they are most assuredly not justified in the cases recently reported out of Aroostook and York Counties.”
The dates for the legislative hearings have not yet been set.
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