By Jason Koebler
In April, a Virginia conservation police officer (known as a “game warden”) walked into the yard of a man named Joshua Highlander, saw a surveillance camera he had set up in his backyard, confiscated it without a warrant, and saved the photos from it.
I heard about Highlander’s case soon after I wrote about a town in Michigan hiring a drone operator to surveil one of its resident’s property. I called Highlander’s lawyer, Joe Gay, and explained that I’d been writing about surveillance for a long time, but wasn’t aware of other cases where law enforcement walked onto private property and confiscated a camera without a warrant. To me, it seemed like such a blatant violation of the man’s Fourth Amendment rights. “Am I missing something here?” I asked.
“No, that’s exactly what happened,” Gay said. “He has a 30-acre property, the warden put on camouflage, they snuck onto the property, they saw he had a trail camera in a field, they took it, they scared his wife and his son, who saw them as they were exiting the property, and they basically rummaged through his camera looking at all the pictures looking for evidence of hunting violations. Game wardens do this thing all the time.”
Conservation police in Virginia are the law enforcement branch of the Department of Wildlife Resources. As Gay mentioned, they enforce hunting rules in the state. Highlander is a deer and turkey hunter who has a series of Tactacam brand cameras on his property that are used to monitor wildlife movements and are popular among hunters.
Highlander was not cited for any sort of violation, but told me that earlier in the day before his camera was seized, he, his brother, and his father each legally shot turkeys elsewhere in the state and logged them (as is required by law) with the Department of Wildlife Resources.
“We all killed a turkey on opening day separately. Most of the time we go together. But we were texting and we were like ‘Man, this is gonna be an awesome picture.’ Next thing you know, my brother’s like ‘I got the wardens on me,’” Highlander told me.
Later that day, the warden came to his house, inspected his property, and confiscated his camera: “The officers put on full camouflage outfits, including ‘leafy jackets’ to blend into Mr. Highlander’s woods,” Gay wrote in a lawsuit filed against the state’s Department of Wildlife Resources. “The officers crossed Mr. Highlander’s property line—walking right past his clearly visible ‘no trespassing’ signs … the officers then seized Mr. Highlander’s camera—physically removing it from the pole to which it was mounted—and then walked out of Mr. Highlander’s property back to their trucks.” Nominally, the warden was looking for evidence that Highlander “baited” his property to entice deer to come there, which would be illegal, or had killed a deer in a way that violated state law. It did not find any evidence of this or any other wrongdoing.