AboutWilliam A Saunders Expertise I can answer general questions about the legal system, how the courts work, corrections and law enforcement in general. I cannot provide legal advice.
Experience The criminal justice system, juvenile justice, law enforcement, and community corrections/correctional education
Question QUESTION: Mystery writer again. Here's a sticky one, I think: Suppose someone has been sending threatening letters to a Forest Service office, objecting to something (legal) that's going on in the National Forest that they supervise. It turns out that the sender was a person who lives nearby in the county. Rather than arresting him, they just want to throw a scare into him. My scenario has a Forest Service person and a Sheriff's Deputy going out together to "have a little chat" with him. Is this plausible?
ANSWER: Hi,
sorry for the delay. I had been sick, but I'm better now.
For a situation like this, it is very unlikely that the investigators would just try and scare the person who sent the threatening letter. They would probably arrest him, because they wouldn't want to take a chance that the threats were real. They would not go out just to have a chat. The other thing is, how threatening were the letters? Were the letters merely addressing dissatisfaction with policies of the Forest Service office? Or did the letters provide details about some threat, promising to cause harm of some kind? If the letters were just addressing frustration, then that's fine and the person would probably not be arrested. People do that all the time. But if the letters were aggressive in their threats, then that's another story.
Does this help answer your question?
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QUESTION: Thank you!! Glad to hear that you're feeling better.
I forgot to say: Anonymous letters. And they contain extremely vague threats: "If you keep on doing this, there will be negative consequences."
When they identify who's sending the letters, they know why he's sending them (in a nutshell, he owns subsurface rights that could be negatively impacted by the other activity). The Forest Service wants to let him know that they're on to him, but he hasn't done anything arrest-worthy and they want to keep it that way.
Answer Oh, okay. If the threats are vague, then, probably they would still bring the person in for questioning, even if they didn't officially charge him with something. They would do as you said, talk to him, mainly to figure out whether or not he was serious with the threats or was just angry and blowing off steam.
