Source: greenbaypressgazette.com
Tribal chairman Gary Besaw
KESHENA - Menominee County officials want the Menominee Tribe of Indians to know they have no gripe with the tribe’s hemp-growing operation.
In a letter to the tribe, officials said the county’s role was minimal in a federal raid on the tribe’s hemp operation last month and should not be taken as a threat to relations between the county and tribe.
County sheriff’s deputies and Highway Department workers were on hand Oct. 23 when federal and state agents executed a federal search warrant on the tribe’s hemp operation and confiscated thousands of plants. Federal agents claim the hemp contained prohibited concentrations of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, a plant closely related to hemp.
The county said in a press release explaining the letter it was responding to tribal inquiries about why the county participated, under what authority and what that participation might mean to future relations between them.
It’s unclear whether those inquiries were made formally. Tribal chairman Gary Besaw said tribal government, tribal members and non-members all have been wondering about the county’s involvement.
“We’ve asked, but … it was not in any kind of adversarial way,” he said. “It was, ‘we have a relationship; can you explain what happened, what your role was?’”
The tribe hasn’t met to discuss its official reaction to the county’s explanation, Besaw said.
The growing of hemp is illegal in the state of Wisconsin, but the tribe believes it is allowed under the federal farm bill to grow it for research purposes. Despite its legal issues, the plant has huge potential for textiles, body-care and building material products, and Besaw said the tribe wants to explore how it could possibly use it as a way to build its struggling economy.
Its decision to grow the plants for research was entirely independent from and unrelated to the tribe’s referendum this summer on whether to legalize marijuana within tribal boundaries, Besaw said. The tribal government has taken no steps toward legalizing marijuana following the August referendum, in which a majority of tribal members voted in favor of legalizing the drug for medicinal and recreational use.
According to the federal warrant, at least some of the tribe’s hemp plants exceeded the 0.3 percent THC level that marks the legal difference between hemp and marijuana. Besaw denied that.
“We don’t want to grow it illegally,” he said. “We have a tribal ordinance that says anything that goes above that definition of 0.3 percent would be destroyed, that we’d destroy it and we offered all federal authorities to be there to witness it.”
Hemp plants that are under stress from drought or cold could possibly climb to that level, he said, but in any case, “there’s no way hemp would be anywhere close to anything that could be considered marketable marijuana, which has approximately 30 percent (THC levels). This was industrial hemp, and if it were over by 0.1 of a percent, it would still be under 1 percent, which wouldn’t give anyone any kind of effect and we’d have destroyed it. But that’s not how it played out.”
Instead, drug agents removed about 30,000 plants that were growing or drying, and left maybe 100 pounds of it, Besaw said.
The county, in its letter, wanted to make it clear that the raid was a federal operation, not a county one, said county Emergency Government director Shelley Williams.
The state Division of Criminal Investigation asked the sheriff’s department to help as state and federal agents executed a federal search warrant but never indicated beforehand where or on whom the warrant was to be served, Williams said. The sheriff’s department routinely gets such requests as part of a mutual aid agreement among law enforcement agencies throughout the state, she said.
It was only after the staging part of the operation, which took place in a neighboring county, that the sheriff’s department learned the warrant was to be served on the tribe, she said.
The sheriff’s department has no jurisdiction over the tribe or tribal members but learned it was brought in because it has jurisdiction over the nontribal members who might have been involved in the hemp-growing operation, Williams said. When it turned out those nontribal members weren’t present during the raid, the sheriff’s department’s role became that of assisting with perimeter security only, she said.
State agents asked the sheriff’s department to request help from the county’s Highway Department, she said. That department, believing it was complying with a county request, also agreed without knowing the focus of the operation, Williams said. When the operation commenced, highway department crews worked under the direction of U.S. Drug Enforcement agents by helping to load and transport confiscated plants, she said.
All costs incurred by use of county employees and equipment are to be reimbursed by the federal government, and no tribal funds or equipment were used, Williams said.
Because of its jurisdiction over the nontribal people thought to have been involved in the hemp growing operation, the sheriff’s department could not have refused participation, Williams said.
“But hindsight being 20-20, this is one of those things, I do believe, that if they had known in advance, I think the county’s preference, including that of the Highway Department, would have been that they contact perhaps Oconto or some other county,” Williams said.
“The county wants to make it clear that everything we did, we did with the best intentions in terms of executing the duties the sheriff’s department has and, from the standpoint of the Highway Department, in executing what they felt to be a responsibility to help a fellow county agency.”
Williams said the sheriff’s department takes no position on whether the tribe’s hemp was legal.
The tribe filed suit against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S. Department of Justice over the hemp raid, he said. There might eventually be legal action over the taking of this year’s crop, but the current legal action is to get clarification on the tribe's right to grow hemp, Besaw said.
“Our priority is the ability to cultivate industrial hemp next season, and for that to happen, we first want clarification from the federal courts that we have the right to cultivate industrial hemp,” he said.
“The real impetus is so we can get the next crop in,” he said. “That’s my focus.”
Tribal officials will probably discuss Menominee County’s letter and role in the raid when they meet Dec. 3, Besaw said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has until Dec. 11 to file a written answer to the Menominees’ lawsuit.
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