Sheriff’s 1-Man Ranch Patrol Finds Cattle Rustling Tough to Investigate

Owning a pair of cowboy boots, a big truck and having a working knowledge of horses and cows are not the typical requirements for good detective work, but for Senior Deputy Rhett Searcy those are the tools he needs every day.

Searcy is the one-man Rural Crimes Prevention division for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

He polices the county’s ranches and farms, investigating cases of stolen tractors, pilfered avocados and missing livestock.

That means answering the odd call about “cattle rustling”--or cow theft by cowboys who illegally “rush and hustle” cows off the open range.

Ventura County has had only a handful of such cases, Searcy said.

And although the 4-year-old Rural Crime Prevention program has nabbed thieves with pickups full of stolen avocados, broken up a crime ring that specialized in stealing agricultural chemicals, and ticketed the odd trespasser, Searcy said he has not yet caught up with any cattle rustlers.

“Those are hard crimes to investigate,” he said. “Because without a carcass or a witness, it’s hard to even prove that a cow was stolen. That’s why some of these crimes are not even reported.”

Regional Brand Inspector Morris Weisbart said that with 26 lost or stolen cattle reported last year, Ventura County has the lowest theft rate of any of the three Southern California counties that he monitors.

All those were from the same ranch in the same month, said Weisbart, who declined to identify the ranch.

“Ventura County has low theft numbers for two reasons,” he said. “First, ranchers have a history of not reporting, and second, there’s not that much ranching going on there anymore. Much of the business has moved where it’s more affordable.”

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Ranchers fail to report suspected theft for reasons ranging from embarrassment to a belief that the cattle will never be found anyway, Weisbart said. Ventura County ranchers also don’t seem to want to turn to authorities for help, he said.

But even on a small scale, the cattle thefts can be costly for small ranching operations in the county.

There have been cases in the county where thieves have come onto a ranch, killed a cow, and butchered it to sell on the black market or on the street.

“A pair of professionals with a chain saw can kill a cow and butcher it in about 45 seconds,” Searcy said.

About four years ago, John Harvey had 39 cows stolen.

He figures the thief quietly drove a truck onto his ranch outside Moorpark and stole one cow a day for a few weeks. Harvey estimates that if the thief butchered the animal and then sold it on the street, he could have made up to $1,000 per animal.

Said Harvey, “Thirty-nine thousand ain’t bad for a month of stealing.”

Still, the biggest headache for ranchers is trespassing, he said.

At Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, the couple who lease the property for ranching complain that trespassing is an almost daily occurrence.

“I think people just think the land is a park and not private property,” said Debbie Early, who ranches the land with her husband, Don.

Trespassing is more than a nuisance for ranchers, who have had to deal with people cutting through their fences to get onto the property and lawsuits when people injure themselves, said Richard Atmore, president of the Ventura County chapter of the Cattlemen’s Assn.

After someone cut a hole in a fence, one of Pete Mokler’s cows got onto the Simi Valley Freeway one night and was hit by a Simi Valley police squad car.

“Thank God nobody was hurt,” Mokler said. “Imagine having a 700-pound cow coming through your windshield.”

Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Bob Brooks said simple confrontations between ranchers and trespassers can also be dangerous.

In two incidents in the last 10 years, Brooks said, frustrated ranchers have shot at trespassers. In one case, a trespasser on a dirt bike was hit in the backside with a few pellets from a shotgun after he ran his bike at a rancher who had asked him to leave.

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In another case, a rancher shot the motorcycle out from under a trespasser, Brooks said. The rancher had actually called to report what he had done.

“You know you can’t shoot at trespassers?” Brooks remembers telling him.

“Well that’s what we used to do in Oklahoma,” the rancher retorted

To avoid that kind of trouble, the Sheriff’s Department has encouraged farmers and ranchers to call Searcy and make reports. The department has even handed out booklets that allow ranchers to write up tickets and cite trespassers.

And although Searcy is the only rural crime prevention deputy for the county, he still can marshal the resources of the whole department when he needs to, including deputies with off-road motorcycles to catch dirt bike riders.

When rancher Harvey was concerned about an aviation school using his property to practice helicopter landings and takeoffs, he contacted Searcy.

“That got cleared up right away,” Harvey said. “When you call Rhett he responds real quick.”

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FYI

To report rural crimes, call Senior Deputy Rhett Searcy at 654-2832. If the crime is in progress, call 911.