Okay, hey quirky before you say before we sign
off, would you do me a favor? Do you have about
15 more minutes? Sure. I want to do a bonus episode
because I'm kind of delayed releasing my wolf
episodes because I got sick So I want to do like
a little short bonus episode and this topic of
it is gonna crack you up Do you remember? You
know what? We're just gonna record it. Okay,
because I want to get your reaction to the whole
thing All right. All right. So here we go. We're
going to start a whole new episode, but we're
not, we're just going to leave it recording.
Okay. All right. Yeah. Is this going to be 15
minutes? You're going to appreciate it. Okay.
Here we go. Five, four. Okay, everybody, listen
up. Here we go. This is Nature's Secret Service,
the podcast that puts you in the room with the
men and women of wildlife law enforcement. I'm
your host, Ed Newcomer, and this is a short bonus
episode to hold you over between season two and
season three. We're a little delayed getting
season three out, so I thought I'd... Take this
opportunity to produce a short bonus episode
for you Especially while I have former special
agent Corky Roberts at my disposal who's with
us today Corky. Thanks so much for joining us
for this bonus episode You don't even know what
we're gonna talk about So to preface this I'm
gonna tell listeners and watchers that while
Corky was a special agent for us most of his
career as a special agent, he was also a special
agent pilot, which means, you know, he flew a
plane for the Fish and Wildlife Service. We do
have, you know, historically, we've had a number
of agents in our force that have been certified
as pilots. And what I want to talk to you about,
Corky, is a time when you consulted with me on
the telephone. You were in Washington. I was
in California. So I don't think we were part
of the same region anymore, but you and I knew
each other and I knew you were a pilot. Can you
explain a little bit to listeners about, I don't
know, I can't remember the office, but the Department
of Interior Aviation Department. Office of Aircraft
Services. That's it. Department of Interior Office
of Aircraft Services. Can you just describe what
that is and what they do and the influence they
have over the different employees working at
the Department of Interior? Yes. So, Office of
Aircraft Services is a division of the Department
of Interior. Right. And they were formed, I want
to say the 70s, I guess. At that time, we had
Fish and Wildlife Agents, Bureau of Land Management,
park service people, not just agents, but biologists
and everything who were flying people around
doing surveys and law enforcement patrols and
this kind of thing. And people were dying. I
mean, it was pretty serious stuff. There were
a lot of plane crashes. You can go back and look
at the records and it was pretty significant.
And it was kind of a wild west of aviation at
that time. I mean, some of the planes were put
together off of other planes and there was really
no regulation to it because it was operating
not under the FAA rules, but under public keys.
And so I don't know who made the final decision,
but they formed the Office of Aircraft Services
to go, wait a minute, we need to have some standards
here. And so they, over the period of years,
they developed some standards to promote safety
and training and that kind of thing within Fish
and Wildlife Service and within the Department
of Interior, Aviation and Cadre. Not only with
fleet pilots, pilots who worked for the government
agencies, but also the contract pilots that they
were hiring to do firefighting, particularly
firefighting, but ambulance work, surveys, that
kind of thing. And so they started putting the,
you know, tightening things up quite a bit. And
it did help. And it has helped. They have done
an important task. However, they have - Yeah,
there's a big however. It sometimes gets a little,
over the years, they have enhanced safety dramatically,
but sometimes it's a little overboard. Yeah.
So that's a great introduction because you're
right. They have really been tremendously beneficial
in terms of reducing the number of mortalities,
plane crashes increasing and making it more uniform
for pilot training and aircraft safety just in
general. That's been excellent. We're gonna jump
ahead now. I believe it was around 2011 or 12
I was a what they call a field training agent
or FTO field training officer and I had new new
agents that I was training and one of those agents
had an investigation involving destruction of
endangered species habitat that likely led to
the destruction of the endangered species itself,
the California tiger salamander. And one of the
things that we needed to do was document how
this person had destroyed their land by farming
practices, basically. They had destroyed a few
ponds. And the perfect way to do that would be
to fly over the property. So I remember You had
a plane at the time, but I your plane was not
available And I don't remember why maybe it was
just out of service at the time or you weren't
available I don't remember but you were in Washington
anyway So it would have required flying your
airplane all the way down to Southern, California
to do this. So what I did Me and my training
trainee we reached out to the local sheriff's
department Santa Barbara. Now you know what I'm
talking about. It was the Santa Barbara County
Sheriff's Department and they have a helicopter
and they fly a helicopter. Law enforcement agency,
they do all kinds of rescue work, law enforcement
work, patrol work, whatever it is. And they were
like, absolutely, we'll fly you over the property.
And our goal was to take pictures of the changes
this farmer had made to his property from the
air. So yeah, no problem. We'll fly you. Come
on over to the Santa Barbara airport, and we'll
pick you up. So I thought, man, you know what?
Shit, I better call Corky, because I can't remember
what the DOI rules are on this. And I remember
calling you, and you said, you can't do that,
Ed. Do you have any recollection of that call
or why you? Tell me what you remember about that
phone call. I remember you called me up and I
can't. I think I think that you were region 8
at that time. Yes, region 8 yeah and I could
not get the authorization to come down there
because I had a Cessna 185 with a camera on it.
It would have been ideal for this. For one reason
or another, for personality problems, whatever
it may have been, I was told. No, you can't go
that far. It's too much of a night. Okay, so
your denial came from the Region 1 Office of
Law Enforcement Supervisor chain. Okay, yes.
Now you know where we're going. or what happened.
But I remember you and then I forgot about it
because you talked to me about it. And then all
of a sudden you called up today, I got Santa
Barbara County Sheriff's or whatever Sheriff's
Department was would do that for you. I said,
yeah, no, that might have been one of those things
you probably should have done it and then ask
for forgiveness. Yeah, that's for forgiveness
later if you even get caught. Right. Yeah, it's
because basically you as a Fish and Wildlife
employee, Department of Interior employee, you
cannot fly on an aircraft that is not carted,
inspected, and approved by the Office of Aircraft
Services. And you need to have protection equipment,
helmets, flight suits, the whole thing to do
that. And that's one of those things maybe it's
gone a little bit overboard now, you know, because
there are times, but in Alaska, I want, you know,
there were times I wanted to go up with a, you
know, state trooper. They had helicopters, you
know, and I was like, oh man, I could go get
over there and get this done and not have to
land three miles away and hike into some site,
you know, it's gonna drop right down on top of
it. Couldn't do it, you know, could not do it,
unless you didn't have permission. So I never
did that. No, you know what? So on my end, I'm
down in Santa Barbara County in the moment where
I'm like, oh, these guys can do this for us like
in the next hour or two. And I'm like trying
to figure out with you a workaround and you were
just adamant can't do it. And to me, from my
perspective, and you agreed with me on this 100%.
You know, it's just one of those things where
a well -intentioned rule is producing an absurd
result, right? Like we worked with Coast Guard
all the time on environmental or wildlife issues
off the coast. To tell us that we couldn't go
ride with a Coast Guard helicopter crew or an
airplane crew is absurd. The idea, especially
if the underlying rules and regulations are designed
for safety of the DOI employee. The idea that
we're not gonna be safe flying with a Coast Guard
crew Or even a local sheriff or the LAPD helicopter
those those guys have so many hundreds and thousands
of hours of flight time and The aircraft are
so well cared for it's not you know to me. It
was like I Personally, I don't have any issue
flying with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's
Department So this is my favorite part do you
remember So we had this back and forth, and it
wasn't an argument between me and you. It was
a discussion about, you knew what I was doing.
I'm trying to find a reasonable workaround of
this that I can get away with without getting
in trouble. And you're trying to give me the
correct advice, but you're also trying to help
me figure out if there's a workaround. Do you
remember what your final advice was? You probably
don't. I do. I don't. So you said to me, You
said to me first thing you said to me was Ed
This is probably one of those situations where
it probably would have been better for you to
have done it and not asked but now that you've
asked here's the answer and I I Think one of
the things I threw out to you was The only way
I'm gonna get in trouble for this quirky is if
I crash if this airplane crashes That's true.
That's the only way I'm gonna get in trouble
And if I, if this helicopter crashes, I got a
lot bigger problems than what my special agent
charge for the regions is going to say. I'm probably
going to be dead. Right. So I remember telling
you that and you, you said something like, uh,
you know, ed, uh, I'm telling you under DIY rules,
you can't do it. But I think you either said,
I don't want to know what you do or. You know
do what you need to do. I can't remember But
basically it was a nice way to see why a yourself
but basically the message was clear so here's
what I hung up that phone and I looked at my
trainee who was special agent Jessica Espinosa
who's the daughter of the deputy director of
our forensics lab. And she really wanted to go.
It was her case. It was her case. She was a new
agent. It was her first habitat destruction case.
She wanted to go. And I said to her, I explained
my conversation with you. And I said, here's
the deal. We're going. We're not going to give
up this opportunity to get on a helicopter when
the sheriff's department's making it available.
We're going, but you're not going. I'm going.
And I told her, I said, you're a trainee. But
I was like, you're a trainee. I'm a senior agent.
I got 13 years on. I'm probably not going to
get in trouble unless we crash. If we do crash,
I don't care if I get in trouble. You know, I
can't put it I can't put a person who's on their
probationary training period She's kind of bummed
I watched her as we took off in the helicopter
down on the tarmac watching us take off Yeah,
we did the flight we took the pictures and nobody
was ever the wiser and I never got in trouble
for it good now Another place that this office
of aircraft safety came up in later was the use
of drones. Did you ever get into it with them
about using drones for aerial surveillance? You
know, I wanted to. They were just starting to
teach guys, to approve guys to fly drones. And
I asked Portland, I said, I would like to go
to their class. No, we don't do that here. No,
it was just no. At that point in my career, everything
was no. I would have loved to have done that.
I think drones are... A great tool, but they
could they could be abused. Yes. Yeah. Needs
training. Uh, and so when, you know, when, when
I'm talking about drones, so listeners know we're
not talking about, you know, military grade,
you know, Reapers, we're talking about off the
shelf DJI drones that anybody could buy. And
I saw them, especially in urban areas is a tremendous
tool. Uh, because as long as you fly, I think
the minimum ceiling for helicopters is what?
400 feet. unless it's an emergency, something
like that. There's different variances. But I
figured as long as you flew your drone at the
same altitude, the LAPD was authorized to fly
their helicopter and look down on your property
that we were probably OK. But yeah, it's very
frustrating because the Office of Aircraft, whatever,
wouldn't allow us to even purchase a drone, even
if our region had agreed. And you're right, region
one at that time, their knee -jerk reaction to
everything seemed to be no. Yes. To me, since
you were a pilot, I know you understand the rules
that aircraft operations had better than I did.
But I just wanted to get your take on it because
I often felt like it was enforcing a rule for
the sake of the rule and not looking at what's
the purpose of the rule, right? Yeah. But that's
what rules do. They become just a rule. The purpose
of it is long since lost. And it's unfortunate,
you know, because drones are an unbelievable
tool now. I mean, I still fly fires, as you know,
and the advent of the increase in the number
of drones, lawful drones on in fires now is unbelievable,
and they are a fantastic tool. There are pretty
significant restrictions on when and where and
that kind of thing. So they're a great tool.
God, I would love to have had one. Yeah, and
you know, I'm all for restrictions for safety
reasons. I'm all for restrictions to make sure
agents and officers don't abuse people's constitutional
rights, you know, keep it at the proper, you
know, altitude. Don't use infrared to look in
houses and stuff like that. I'm all for all of
that. But as long as what I'm not for, it's I
cannot stand the application of a rule or regulation
without understanding the purpose of the rule
or regulation. Because in my view, if you're
applying the rule, you should be applying it
to accomplish the purpose. And if the purpose
is safety, I just didn't, we always operated
with officer discretion, right? We could enforce
the law or not, depending on our discretion.
And it was one of the, I always felt that that
office of, what was it? Aircraft operations,
right? Office of aircraft services. I always
felt that office of aircraft services, more often
than not, interfered with us doing the job we
were supposed to do, then it did. saving me.
You know, I don't want to say the office itself
did, but the idea, but it's the personnel, it's
more of the purpose. The purpose of those rules
is lost to time. It really is. Now it's just,
oh, if this says we can't do this, nobody asks
why. Why can't Ed get on a helicopter with a
10 ,000 hour helicopter pilot who flies at night
through wired terrain to chase bad guys? to go
look at a strawberry patch. You know, and that's
where, that's where it gets lost. And yeah, their
initial purpose was great. And they still, they're
still around. I mean, I just took a check ride
three days ago from OAS to go fly a single -engine
air tanker. You know, I could do it every three
years. And they have some good people working
there that do a good job and make sure you're
operating safely and make sure your airplanes
are in good shape. but sometimes yeah and that
was one of those times where where we just were
gonna make sure we got the case work done i think
that is the same kind of frustrating advice you
were giving me about flying you're saying like
ed i'm telling you nobody's gonna know you did
it yeah well can i do it I'm telling you, nobody's
going to know you did it. This conversation never
happens. I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't know who that is. All right. Well, that
is the quick story I wanted to tell, because
to me, it's just so indicative of the things
that come up when you're working on our job.
And it was so indicative of my relationship with
you. We could have that fun conversation and
know exactly what each of us were going to do
or not do. And it's just one of those things
that I think, unless you're in law enforcement
and you're kind of living it every day and having
to make those decisions on the fly, it's hard
to appreciate. hearing a discussion between me
and you about that kind of call is good for people
to hear. If I was Espinoza's daughter, I'd still
be pissed at you. She probably is. Her nickname
though, you know, my nickname was Ed the Fed
at the office and we nicknamed her J -Fed because
Jessica Espinoza is J -Fed. So I think we made
up for it. We gave her a good nickname in the
office. Good. Anyway, now if the Internal Affairs
PRU people want to come after me, have at it.
I flew on a plane without permission. That's
right. Darn you. I got good notes here if they
ask me. Exactly. Exactly. All right, my friend.
Thank you for joining me for a quick bonus episode.
I appreciate it. When you go out for your, this
is going to be a bad fire season, I think. So
when you're flying. I think so too. I always
think about you during fire season. So be careful,
fly well, and thank you for doing that. I've
already been out. Thank you for doing that job.
I appreciate it. No, my pleasure. All right,
Corky. That brings us to the end of the bonus
episode. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. We'll
see you next time.