two-year-long investigation<\/a> into exotic animal trafficking, including snapping turtles, Gila monsters and pit vipers. You led the charge of securing search warrants and helping a team of investigators. How did the case start?<\/p>\nA: This person was showing pictures of these animals, and then talking about potentially selling them (on social media). \u2026 That\u2019s the main way that this case came about. \u2026 He was meeting with various people in other counties, throughout San Diego. He was essentially trading these venomous, protected reptiles for guns, drugs, things like that (from Mexico).<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/SUT-L-MCCANN-WILDLIFE-01-rotated-1.jpg\")
A reptile that was part of a two-year investigation into exotic animal trafficking in Chula Vista. (Lt. Garrett Smittle \/ California Department of Fish and Wildlife)<\/p>\n
Q: What drives people to collect and trade exotic wildlife? Has social media made it easier for people to do so?<\/p>\n
A: My understanding is that for a lot of these people, it becomes almost like a hobby, that they actually take care of the animals. But it\u2019s also kind of like this cool status symbol. \u2026 They put pictures of themselves up on social media with a gun and a snake \u2026 it\u2019s been sort of glorified. \u2026 People\u2019s ability to communicate anonymously via social media and then pay either through web apps, like Venmo or Zelle, makes it easier.<\/p>\n
Q: What are the most common wildlife crimes in California that you handle? How many prosecutions are roughly filed per year?<\/p>\n
A: On average, we\u2019re talking 10 cases a year, with a small deviation at the most. \u2026 The main (crime) would be the illegal possession, such as the lobster \u2014 like taking too many, or taking them during the wrong time of year, not filling out the proper documentation \u2026 and then \u2026 if you kill a deer outside of season, or in a place where you\u2019re not supposed to be shooting deer.<\/p>\n
Q: How often would you say these crimes are because of a lack of knowledge of the law?<\/p>\n
A: Constantly. We try to do a decent amount of outreach and educational stuff. You know, we work with businesses. They do signage, and we\u2019re aware (a lack of knowledge) happens \u2026 I\u2019d say it\u2019s ignorance is bliss. \u2026 I mean, in my experience, the hunters we prosecute are aware of the regulations and choose creative ways to avoid them, like get an archery tag during deer season but use a rifle instead (which is harder tag to obtain from Fish and Wildlife).<\/p>\n
Q: Tell me about the difference between cases handled at the state and federal level. When do you take it versus the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office?<\/p>\n
A: It really depends on the agency that does the primary investigation. On the state side, I want to say 99% of the crimes are misdemeanors. \u2026 The federal side has much more significant penalties \u2026 you could technically go to prison; federal crimes potentially have harsher sentences. \u2026 You get people that come across the border, and they bring monkeys or a tiger. \u2026 If you get caught at the border, that\u2019s going to be investigated by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security; they\u2019re probably going to send that case to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office. \u2026 On the state side \u2026 the penalties are not as strong.<\/p>\n
Q: What\u2019s that process like of deciding who takes the case?<\/p>\n
A: We have our own task force \u2014 it\u2019s the San Diego County Environmental Protection Task Force, and the U.S. attorney is part of it. The D.A.\u2019s Office, the city attorney, we have the local regulators, we have California Fish and Wildlife, we have U.S. Fish and Wildlife, we have Homeland Security. And once a month, we meet, and we talk about our cases. \u2026 then we decide who will be better situated to prosecute the case.<\/p>\n
Q: What do penalties look like?<\/p>\n
A: Every case we try to evaluate on its own, depending on the seriousness of the offense \u2014 what the injuries look like, whether it was malicious, intentional as compared to accidental, whether there\u2019s a criminal history or not. If you go criminal, your options would be felony (punishable by prison for more than a year), misdemeanor (punishable by local jail for anything from one day to a year) and an infraction (punishable by a fine).<\/p>\n
Q: What do you want the public to know about your work?<\/p>\n
A: The main goal is just to keep and maintain San Diego as one of the most amazing outdoor places to live. \u2026 I think there is a public misunderstanding that some of our prosecutions are draconian \u2014 that it\u2019s the government just picking on people, and that\u2019s really not the case. There\u2019s a reason why a fish has to be a certain length to be removed, or why you\u2019re only supposed to take a certain number. \u2026 The biggest thing is that the goal is for everybody to be able to enjoy these recreational activities and to keep San Diego as nice as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crimes that endanger San Diego County\u2019s biodiversity, wildlife and environment, such as illegal possession of lobster, killing deer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,138,181,23,100,74,84,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-422535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}