On the recordJuly 27, 2011
I reclaim my time to say that the 158-mile area is a portion of the inside of the park, of the 2.5 million-acre park. So it seems to me what the gentleman is suggesting is that he believes--and I understand--that the National Park Service or that an individual officer made a mistake here, that they abused their authority, and I understand that. When I was a boy, my favorite television show when I was 9, 10, 11 was ``Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.'' He had his faithful horse, Rex, and his dog, Yukon King. Each week at 5 o'clock on Friday, he would come out to patrol the Yukon. He worked for the Canadian Royal Mounties. I would like to think that, if he ever made a mistake--if he ever overstepped his boundaries, if he ever improperly treated anyone he was in the process of arresting--that the punishment wouldn't be that the Mounties could never again, any of them, go into the Yukon, because that would seem to me to kind of result in a less fully implemented set of law enforcement principles in that area. What we're learning here is that the punishment to the National Park Service for potentially something that one or two officers engaged in is that none of them can continue their policing, which the Coast Guard says they need. In fact, this is, in many ways, such a remote part of the Yukon that the Coast Guard right now relies upon the Park Service police to police these areas.…
