Who really “destroyed a decade of law enforcement?”

In the last week of November Bloomberg Businessweek on the MSNBC website posted an article titled “The Gloucester Fish War – How a small town in Massachusetts destroyed a decade of law enforcement,” by Brendan Borrell.

Mr. Borrell’s point seemed to be that something approaching a conspiracy by Gloucester fishing interests, local, state and federal politicians, the Gloucester Daily Times and the Inspector General’s office in the US Department of Commerce victimized the entire federal fisheries enforcement process in the Northeast. Reminiscent of the horse operas of yesteryear, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration enforcement personnel, wearing the white hats à la such stalwarts as John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, gave their all to fighting the good fight; but rather than rustlers or bandits they were fighting fishermen from a community where cheating was an accepted way of life.

Given the title of his article, it will come as no surprise to anyone that Mr. Borrell painted the hats that the fisher-men – and their supporters – wear a pretty unequivocal black.

Did Mr. Borrell get the right hats on the right heads? Having been a fairly close observer of the situation as it unfolded, I would have to answer that he wasn’t even close. And putting together the observations of a number of eminently qualified people and organizations who were directly involved in several connected investigations, people with no particular ax to grind, I’d suggest that they would agree with me. My purpose here is to lay out all of the information that seems to have escaped Mr. Borrell’s notice and let the folks who read this decide for themselves.

(For the rest of this FishNet article, which at 4,500 words is pretty long - go to http://www.fishnet-usa.com/Decade_of_law_enforcement.pdf.