Wildlife Officials Use Taser to Free Stuck Deer
Trevor Phipps
Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell has repeatedly warned the public that serious crimes are on the rise throughout the Ute Pass region.
In fact, the increase in local crimes prompted the sheriff’s office and county commissioners to hold a meeting with Cripple Creek city officials earlier this year to discuss ways to battle a big hike in property thefts in the southern Teller area. The sheriff also joined forces with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office by cross-deputizing all of the deputies in both counties.
Despite these stringent preventive measures, property-related criminal activity has now apparently invaded Woodland Park.
On November 21, the Woodland Park Police Department (WPPD) made a post on their social media pages stating that they had received a number of theft calls. More specifically, the agency reported the theft of ATVs, ATVs on trailers and at least one motor vehicle over a short time period.
“Please remove crimes of opportunity and secure your valuables and remove spare keys from your vehicles,” the WPPD post stated. “Keep doors locked and remain vigilant in your neighborhoods. Call us to report any suspicious activity and let us investigate for you. We would rather find nothing than not get called, then discover another victim of crime later.”
According to Woodland Park Police Chief Chris Deisler, the incidents are still under investigation with no suspects found at press time. “I think we worked three calls in the span of a week involving that kind of stuff (property theft),” Deisler said. “Which is not only terribly not common around here, but it speaks to a pattern, so it’s just important that everyone keeps an eye on things.”
Then on November 22, WPPD made another post asking for the public’s help in finding suspects of a theft that took place at Walmart in Woodland Park. Just before 3 p.m. that day, WPPD received a report of a theft from the store.
When police officers arrived on scene, they located the suspect’s vehicle (believed to be a GMC SUV) and attempted to stop it. But according to the chief, as soon as the police officer turned on their lights, the suspect fled the scene east on Hwy. 24 in speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. The chief said that the officers did not engage in a chase with the suspect, they instead promptly posted a picture of the vehicle and a male and female suspect on their social media pages in an attempt to locate them.
After a short investigation, police were able to identify the male suspect, but they have not yet made an arrest. “I imagine it won’t be long before we figure out who the female was, and we will probably have some charges coming against either one of them or both of them before too long,” the chief said.
Wildlife Officials Shock Deer to Free It From Swing Set
Theft investigations weren’t the only area of concern among local law enforcement officials.
On November 20, officers from WPPD and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Division responded to a call of a deer being stuck on someone’s property in Woodland Park. When officers arrived to the scene, they found an adult male deer had gotten his antlers tangled in a rope swing on someone’s swing set in their backyard.
In order to free the animal, CPW officers deployed a taser to attempt to free the stuck buck. “CPW Officers Aaron Berscheid and Travis Sauder found this buck hopelessly tangled in a playground and thrashing dangerously,” a social media post from CPW Southeast Region stated. “Exhausted, it was vulnerable to predators. With help from the Woodland Park Police, CPW officers tased the buck and cut it free.”
In a video posted on the CPW social media page, it shows the officers tasing the buck for around one minute to render it unconscious. Other officers than cut the ropes the deer’s antlers were tangled in to free the animal.
Some accounts surfacing on the internet and on television footage indicated that tasing a deer was extreme. But according to the police chief, a taser is another tool that often gets used in similar situations by law and wildlife officials. “That (using a taser) is one of the tactics that CPW will deploy so that they don’t have to use a tranquilizer and potentially leave the buck tranquilized and be easy prey for something,” Deisler said. “Just from talking to them at the scene that day, my understanding is that they have the ability to use a taser, but if the taser goes on for over one minute, they have to stop and regroup. And in this particular instance, my understanding was that plan B would have had to have been to cut the antlers off. And no one wanted to do that so this was definitely a win.”
On the same social media post, CPW officials reminded the public about safety steps to take when living in the mountains. “When you live with wildlife, it’s critical to remove hazards that can trap, injure and kill animals,” the post stated. “Sports nets and playgrounds pose chronic threats. Holiday decorations are dangers, too.”
For more information and details about the incident, visit: https://krdo.com/news/
