It took another 15 days before the last of the final occupiers walked out, Thursday morning OR time. As the town of Burns, Oregon, breathes a sigh of relief, the curtain is drawing to a close on a very human story. A recent poll from Colorado College reinforced the public’s desire to maintain federal lands, and faculty member Eric Perramond said: “Charges of government overreach from the ideological fringes are making headlines, but in reality most Westerners in this poll favor greater protection and sensible use of the open lands and national treasures that define the region”.
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After the occupation ended Thursday, the FBI’s special agent in charge, Greg Bretzing, said Graham had been softening up the last holdouts over the phone.
The bureau said in a statement Thursday that “no one was injured, and no shots were fired” when all four were taken into custody.
“Whether this is a turning point, it is impossible to say”, said Randi Spivak, a public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity who had accused the Obama administration of a lax response to the Bunkerville standoff. The Hammonds distanced themselves from the armed occupation.
If there is a possible upside to having it closed for so long, it may be that the Malheur has become perhaps the best-known wildlife refuge in the nation. They were rounding up Bundy’s cattle when he put out a call and armed groups showed up. She echoed Ammon Bundy’s demands in returning federal land back to the original owners. He was accompanied by his brother Ryan.
After Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and militia supporters prevailed in an armed 2014 standoff concerning cattle trespassing on federal land, the government wasn’t in any hurry to bring criminal charges.
The FBI declined to provide budget information on the standoff but a law enforcement official estimated that a minimum of 90 federal agents would have been required to staff the three checkpoints set up outside the standoff compound 24 hours a day. Those arrested will face arraignment before a U.S. Magistrate Judge in Portland on Friday, February 12, 2016.
Ammon and Ryan Bundy were arrested in January along with nine protesters on a snow-covered roadside where a spokesman for the group, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, was shot dead.
“I just posted hallelujah on my Facebook”, said Julie Weikel, who lives next to the preserve. The difference between the FBI’s hesitation and the hasty resort to force by local police departments in dozens of high-profile shootings over the previous year couldn’t be clearer, and might provide a model for how more cops should operate.
Cliven Bundy, who was arrested in Portland, has been charged with six federal crimes and will soon appear in court.
Until Wednesday, FBI and police had largely kept their distance from the buildings occupied by the militants, sealing off access to the refuge headquarters with roadblocks. Local sherriff David Ward was vocal in his opposition to the occupation. The Army veteran served combat tours in Somalia and Afghanistan, the county’s website says.
David Fry The 27-year-old from Blanchester, Ohio, formed an online friendship with Finicum and helped the rancher self-publish a novel.
“Mark McConnell we believe was a federal informant”, says B.J. Soper, one of the founders of a regional activist group called the Pacific Patriots Network. “I’m a free man. I will die a free man”. Fiore, a conservative lawmaker from Las Vegas with a record of supporting gun rights, was an unusual candidate for negotiator in Oregon.
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After his arrest Thursday night in Forest Grove, Stanek told federal agents that he was at the refuge in a “medic capacity” and had done a guard shift armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, Barrow said.
