[Az-Geocaching] Who Manages What

[Scott Wood]

At 07:22 PM 10/26/2003 -0800, you wrote:
regulations and ordinances. I have even met with the chief's of police in a 
couple of these cities. I just have no desire to deal with these issues in 
any other areas. I have 800 cache finds in less than two years and 
obviously enjoy the hobby very much. But, I don't like feeling like a 
criminal everytime I go seeking out a cache... even in a wilderness 
environment. It just isn't fun.


I understand completely where you are coming from.  Geocaching is not 
nearly as much fun as it was when we started.  While you would have most 
likely won in court if the cop would have cited/arrested you, you would 
still have had to fight it and that takes time and possibly money.  There 
are many aspects of geocaching that are not fun any longer, and that really 
bugs me, but I have always said that anything I enjoy doing will eventually 
be looked down upon or made illegal.  It does seem that we are far more 
fortunate down here in the Tucson area than you folks up in Phoenix are 
when it comes to land managers though, and for that I am grateful.

Remember, the laws never mean what they say.  The cop could have still 
cited you, and the webpage for the agency is NOT the law, so it would have 
been entirely up to a judge somewhere to decide what the law actually was, 
and I have seen far too many cases where the judges simply agree with the 
cop, especially when it is a low level misdemeanor.  The powers that be in 
the government have pushed asset forfeiture law a long ways in the last few 
years, but I suspect that the ACLU would love to get involved with a case 
where your computer, vehicle and home were seized because  looked up the 
coordinates for a cache.  When it comes down to it, there are good cops and 
bad cops.  The bad cops will arrest you for just about anything.  There are 
good judges and bad judges.  The bad judges will convict you regardless of 
what the law says, it happens all the time.  You just have to hope that you 
meet a good cop or atleast a good judge if you had a run in with a bad cop.

Anyway, back to geocaching.  As I said, I completely understand how you 
feel.  We just spent the weekend doing a bunch of urban caches here in the 
Tucson area.  Even though the multi cache we did was very well put together 
and thought out, probably the best one we have ever done, it just wasn't 
the same thing as getting out into the outdoors and seeing country we have 
never seen before.  I am getting tired of having to look around for little 
kids in parks before I decide if I can grab a cache. :-)



Scott

scott@myblueheaven.com
www.myblueheaven.com