On Wednesday, Dec. 28, about 60 people gathered on Clayton Road in Town and Country to protest the City Council's decision to hire a sharpshooting firm to cull the troublesome population of deer from 660 to 300 over two years.
This is the third time in recent years the city has hired White Buffalo, Inc., based in Connecticut. The major goal is to reduce the number of deer-vehicle collisions in the city. The agreement states that the city will pay the company $1,000 a day, up to $5,000, if opponents manage to delay the culling. That provision made me think that White Buffalo must have reason to believe there will be opponents and possible disruptions. That led me to a search of federal court records.
Belinda M. Geiger lives in Solon, Ohio, a city of 22,000 near Cleveland. In May 2008, she sued Solon city officials, White Buffalo and Anthony J. DeNicola.
DeNicola, who has a doctoral degree in wildlife ecology, is the cofounder and president of White Buffalo. He's also the chief sharpshooter.
At the time, Geiger was what you would call an activist. Solon's public works director described her in a different way in a memo he wrote that found its way into the court file. He called her and others "nut cases."
Geiger was opposed to the shooting of deer in her city. She and others decided to videotape the activities of DeNicola and his employees. They videotaped them leaving their hotel in the morning. They videotaped the sharpshooters up in their stands. They wanted to videotape them shooting deer.
I suspect Geiger wanted to videotape a kill that ran counter to the sharpshooters' claim that a shooting death is a quick, humane way of culling the herd, as opposed, for example, to letting deer die of starvation or having them killed in vehicle collisions that can injure people.
Anyway, one day DeNicola noticed Geiger following him. He pulled his vehicle over, as did Geiger. He reported to police she blocked him in.
Geiger said she didn't, but acknowledged that she pointed to a lapel pin with DeNicola's picture on it and a slash mark across his face.
DeNicola took the photo and mark as a personal threat. Geiger told police it was a free-speech statement that she opposed having DeNicola in town to kill deer, not that she planned to harm him.
On another occasion DeNicola again spotted Geiger following him and he drove to the police station. Geiger parked in a nearby lot and waited. Soon thereafter a police officer stopped Geiger for too much tint in her windshield.
And soon after that, the Solon municipal prosecutor charged Geiger with a misdemeanor count of "menacing" DeNicola.
The menacing charge was later dismissed and Geiger sued in 2008, claiming DeNicola and officials from the mayor to the police chief to the aforementioned public works director conspired to deprive her of her free-speech rights.
She won, but not much. She received $25,000 — half from the city and half from White Buffalo.
White Buffalo also was sued in 2004, along with a county parks district in Ohio, by a group called Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK).
SHARK had stationed several video cameras in areas where they suspected the sharpshooters would be. Park District employees found the cameras and gave them to DeNicola. They were returned to SHARK, according to the lawsuit, damaged and with nothing videotaped. A judge ruled that SHARK's free-speech rights were not violated.
There are two other things about this debate I will mention.
First, in Ohio there has been discussion about Strieter Lite, a Rock Island, Ill., company that believes it has developed a highway-reflector system that at dawn and dusk creates a strobe-light effect that affects animals and not drivers. The company says it keeps animals from crossing highways during their peak hours of movement.
Second, Solon opponents of shooting deer passed petitions to force a citywide vote. The Deer Preservation Act was defeated in November; 62 percent opposed it.
Traci Cardenas, a leader of the Town and Country protest, says her concern is safety. The city has used White Buffalo in the past and required that sharpshooters work on land that is at least 10 contiguous acres. That has now been lowered to five acres, meaning three adjoining property owners with a total of five acres can OK a sharpshooter. She also says a four-hour advance notice is not enough time to warn neighbors that a kill will begin.
Cardenas would prefer that the city sterilize does. She contends that this might be more expensive in the short term but is cheaper in the long term.
The city has set aside $133,000 for the culling program. Deer meat will be donated to Share the Harvest.
POKIN AROUND Steve Pokin is a columnist for the Suburban Journals. He can be reached at spokin@yourjournal.com or by phone at 314-744-5704. His column is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PokinAround.
