By Samuel Short November 1, 2024 at 3:01pm
As former President Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
Regan spoke those words in 1986, but one Pennsylvania man is finding out for himself just what the 40th president meant.
The Farm Journal reported Tim Thomas — a 62-year-old Susquehanna County man — is embroiled in a lawsuit over his constitutional rights, as Water Conservation Officer Ty Moon of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission allegedly violated them on several different occasions in 2023.
According to a lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice, Thomas and his late wife Stephanie — she tragically died after a battle with stage 4 breast cancer — met Moon when the latter allegedly went onto the couple’s property on the shore of Butler Lake on May 13, 2023.
Moon began knocking at the front door before going to the back door and pounding on it. In the process, Thomas said, he passed several no-trespassing signs.
According to the lawsuit, Stephanie Thomas was frightened by the aggressive stranger’s actions.
“She peeked through the drapes and saw a man she didn’t know in dark clothes yelling, and she managed to get into our room,” Thomas told the Farm Journal.
She used a walker to get to the bedroom as she heard Moon yelling, “I know you’re in there!” and “I’m going to call the police!”‘
Moon took pictures of the house, cars and a boat before leaving.
Should this officer be investigated?
Attorney Kirby West for the Institute of Justice gave his position on Moon’s actions. “The government cannot go wherever and whenever it wants — that’s the very reason for the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”
The couple had another run-in with Moon the following day in which he allegedly yelled in Thomas’s face as he and his wife returned home from church. Moon claimed he’d seen Thomas fishing the day before but said Thomas refused to speak with him. Thomas denied seeing or hearing him.
Tim Thomas and his late wife Stephanie bought a cabin in rural PA to have a quiet place
But twice in 2023, a Waterway Conservation Officer came on their yard w/o a warrant and harassed them
Unlike cops, PA law does NOT require WCOs to have a warrant
Today, Tim & @IJ sued. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/2ZVY6sWC4w
— Dan King (@Kinger_DC) September 23, 2024
The PFBC sent Thomas a violation four days later, saying he had been fishing without a license and fled when “given an audible signal.”
“Supposedly Moon was onshore, and we fled by boat,” Thomas told the Farm Journal. “We never saw him, don’t know where he was standing, and certainly didn’t run away. Bottom line, the charges were bogus, but that’s why he came knocking later at our house.”
The charges and $462 fine were dropped after Thomas spoke to a PFBC manager, but that was not the end.
On Aug. 12, 2023, at 9 a.m., Thomas pulled into his dock to find Moon back on his property, accusing him of exceeding regulations by fishing with eight lines.
Thomas told Moon he was trespassing, and the men moved the conversation to the road, only for Moon to go back onto the property two more times to get Thomas’s boat registration and confiscate his fishing rods. Each trip, he passed back and forth in front of a window where Thomas’s ailing wife was bathing.
“The house was our sanctuary after Stephanie was diagnosed,” Thomas told the Farm Journal. “Because of the way we set up the bushes and landscaping, the bathroom provided her with a place to soak and look out at the scenery in total privacy with the curtains open, just inside the window in a clawfoot tub — the same window where a state water officer had just come within an arm’s length.”
According to official documents, Moon also passed a total of four no-trespassing signs as he went back and forth.
After Thomas had Moon’s new round of citations for the incident thrown out on appeal in a Commonwealth Court in June 2024, Thomas opted to sue the PFBC with the help of the Institute for Justice.
Pennsylvania state law allows the PFBC to “enter upon any land or water in the performance of their duties.”
According to the Farm Journal, the law gives generous authority to the PFBC “to enter onto any property without consent, probable cause, or warrant — with no limits on duration, frequency, or scope.”
Thomas and his lawyers hope to have the law found unconstitutional on Fourth Amendment grounds, “so the next landowner or homeowner is protected.” He is also moving forward with the action as a way of honoring the memory of his late wife.
It’s unnerving to think someone in Moon’s position can simply walk onto someone’s property and terrorize a citizen.
Reagan warned the country in 1986, but it seems Thomas had the unfortunate chance to live out those words.
Sam Short is an Instructor of History with Motlow State Community College in Smyrna, Tennessee. He holds a BA in History from Middle Tennessee State University and an MA in History from University College London.
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