TINY TOWN A THREAT? Chicken, Alaska Focus of Armed Task Force Raid
Photo Credit: Dave Bezaire & Susi Havens-Bezaire
A task force including members of 10 state and federal law enforcement agencies descended on a gold mine in the tiny town of Chicken (pop. 17) last month, in what locals described as a raid.
“Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say “POLICE” emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms,” gold miner C.R. Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch. “How would you have felt? You would be wondering, ‘My God, what have I done now?”
A spokesman for the federal Environmental Protection Agency did not deny that agents wore body armor and carried guns, but said it was not a “raid.”
“The ongoing investigation conducted by the AK Environmental Crimes Task Force — consisting of EPA, ADEC, USFWS, ADFG, BLM, Coast Guard, FBI, Alaska State Troopers, NOAA, & US Park Service — did not result in a raid,” the statement read. “The Task Force members involved in the investigation during the week of August 19, 2013, were EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division & Bureau of Land Management’s Office of Law Enforcement & Security, in cooperation with ADEC’s Environmental Crimes Unit.”
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