Walmart is asking Wyoming’s lawmakers to bolster the state’s anti-theft laws against sophisticated, multi-person organized theft attacks.

In response, the legislative Joint Judiciary Committee during its Tuesday meeting in Torrington voted to draft bills that would increase the penalty for misdemeanor theft, decrease the monetary threshold for charging felony theft, decrease the number of “strikes” required to charge a repeat shoplifter with a felony and add penalties for people who cross county lines to commit crimes.

The committee has about eight months to fine-tune, change or reject this bill draft ahead of the Feb. 9 lawmaking session.

Organized retail crime involves multiple people, working out a structured plan to commit targeted thefts, often to re-sell the items, witnesses told the committee Tuesday.

“This is something we see happening across all our stores in Wyoming,” Walmart representative Deborah Herron, who appeared via virtual link, told the committee. “It’s certainly something we’ve seen… and would appreciate the opportunity to make things a little better in Wyoming.”

Two lawmakers asked Herron for specific figures relating Walmart’s losses to crimes like these in Wyoming, and how those compare to other states.

Herron said she didn’t have those figures on hand but would get them within the next couple weeks.

Retail crime’s cost to businesses including lost product costs, higher insurance costs, increased price of goods and unrealized wages was $222.8 million in 2021 in Wyoming, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports.

The total value of goods stolen from Wyoming retailers in 2021 was $9,769,336, the report adds. And the lost tax revenue that year was $1,175,800.

Commerce, Plus Liquor

Walmart wasn’t alone.

Retail advocates, a law enforcement group and the state’s liquor industry also urged legislators to take action.

Dale Steenbergen, CEO of the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce and CEO of the Wyoming Chamber of Commerce, said the thefts are affecting other retailers across Wyoming.

A woman who owned a private meat market “broke my heart,” said Steenbergen, with the story of a man who held the fire escape door open to generate alarm while another man stole $900 worth of meat from the woman’s shop.

The number of people committing organized thefts like these is on the rise, the value of what’s being stolen is rising, and associated violence is also growing, said Steenbergen

Gone are the days when a clerk can tackle someone on the sidewalk without fear of getting shot, he added.

Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police executive director Allen Thompson echoed that, saying across his life’s work in the military and law enforcement, the most dangerous job he had was apprehending shoplifters.

“I received two stab wounds as a result,” said Thompson. 

How We Arrest Folk

Thompson suggested that the committee consider changing Wyoming’s preconditions for arrest.

Those say an officer can arrest someone without a warrant for any crime they commit in his presence. He can arrest a person if he has probable cause that that person committed a felony.

But misdemeanors committed outside the officer’s presence are trickier.

There are some exceptions such as for the misdemeanors of domestic battery and DUI.

But generally, an officer can’t arrest someone who commits a misdemeanor outside the officer’s presence, without a warrant, unless the officer has probable cause not only to believe the crime happened, but also that the person who committed it will not be caught if let go, may injure himself or others or damage property, or may destroy or conceal evidence in the course of his crime.

Thompson clarified in a later interview with Cowboy State Daily that not all members of his group, “but some,” believe easing those preconditions to make it easier to arrest someone would help them better investigate those retail theft campaigns.

Often simple shoplifting crimes turn out to be part of bigger, repetitive, and orchestrated schemes upon investigation – but it’s hard to arrest a passer-through on a newly-discovered felony charge if he’s already left town with a citation, Thompson indicated to the committee.

The counties that suffer the most from those campaigns are those along the interstate highways, he said, but small towns aren’t immune either.

Not Doing That Just Now

The committee did not draft a bill to change Wyoming’s preconditions for arrest.

But, on a motion from Rep. Daniel Singh, R-Cheyenne, the committee voted to draft a bill increasing Wyoming’s ability to enforce theft.

The bill as now visualized would reduce the threshold for a prosecutor to elevate misdemeanor theft charges to felonies (which are punishable by up to 10 years in prison) for stolen goods of $1,000 to $500.

It would also increase the misdemeanor theft penalty from six months in jail to one year.

And it would decrease Wyoming’s “five-strike” shoplifting law, so that a person convicted of shoplifting three times – rather than five – could be charged with a felony.

Committee Co-Chair Art Washut, R-Casper, proposed another bill draft, which the committee voted to pursue.

That one would add a standalone crime or sentencing enhancement for people whose crimes cross county lines.

If a person flees one county to avoid apprehension, prosecution – or in the furtherance of a new felony – the crime could be added to their charges, Washut noted.

Washut asked for a maximum five-year penalty to be attached to that.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.

Caught in a horny situation.

A drunken Montana man made a fool of himself when he tried to impress a potential love interest by climbing a Wyoming landmark — only to be stopped by police.

The man was caught scaling Wyoming’s famous elk antler arches when the Jackson Police Department responded to a call at around 12:40 a.m. on May 13, the Cowboy State Daily reported.

The man — who was not identified by name but was from Montana — told police that he was “drinking” and got the idea to try the drunken escapade to “impress some girls he had just met.”

Ruschill said the man cooperated and was given a “$100 citation.”

Photos shared on the Instagram page touronsofyellowstone of the inebriated romancer show the moment he was caught on top of the arches when police arrived.

Shockingly, he wasn’t the only one captured climbing the structure, as a woman in a white dress and cowboy boots was also snapped committing the act.

Social media users claiming to have lived in or are familiar with the area were stunned that the man thought it was a good idea — even if he was drunk.

“I lived there for a few years right after college and walked by there intoxicated on several occasions from the bars across the street and not once did me or my friends think, ‘Hey, anyone want to climb the antler arches?’” one user commented.

“I have been to Jackson over a hundred times. Never have I ever thought – oh I should climb those horns in the park,” another shared.

“I live here and had not heard about this. Unless it’s today. I hope they were punished but I’m not sure what law they were breaking, unless it was drunk in public,” wrote another.

While many commenters were shocked by the drunken stunt, Ruschill said it wasn’t his first time seeing someone take on the horny task.

“I’ve seen it a couple of times in my career here, but don’t remember the last time we’ve written a citation specifically for climbing one of the arches,” he told the Cowboy State Daily.

However, what surprised the officer was how high up the drunken man got up the arches.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody quite get up as far onto the top like this gentleman,” he said. “We usually catch them thinking about it, talking about it or just starting to climb,” Ruschill said.

“From the photos I saw on Instagram, this guy has made his way to the very top of the arch.”

Ruschill stressed that no one should attempt to climb the structure since it’s not only illegal but also dangerous.

“Our defendant is innocent until proven guilty. But in Jackson, it’s illegal to climb something that’s not meant to be climbed,” Ruschill said.

“It’s a long way to fall from the top of the southwest arch. Someone could get injured or killed doing such a thing. That’s the public safety message to this incident.”

The Jackson elk arches were built by the Jackson Rotary Club in 1953 and comprise 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of antlers, according to Yellowstone Park.com.

They are the first of four stunning arches across the city, with the rest added between 1966 and 1969.

Jackson researchers had been attempting to trap the male barred owl for more than a week, but the wary raptor was proving elusive. First, the owl swooped in for the bait mouse but glanced off the trap. The next time, he performed evasive flight maneuvers and escaped. 

Then on Thursday, they set up a different trap in the Teton County forest habitat, this time with dho-gazza nets — fine mist nets designed to envelop raptors that unknowingly fly into them. 

“And then, literally out of nowhere, the female came in and got caught,” said Bryan Bedrosian, conservation director at the Teton Raptor Center. 

His team affixed the female with a GPS tracker. And like that, the bird became the first-known barred owl tagged in Wyoming. To Bedrosian’s knowledge, it’s also the first barred owl tagged in the Rocky Mountains.

The tagging comes two years after the pair became the first documented nesting barred owls in Wyoming, news that ruffled some scientific feathers. Though they are eastern birds, barred owls have expanded their range westward through the boreal forests of Canada and down into the Pacific Northwest, where they have outcompeted the imperiled northern spotted owls and created significant management conflicts. 

Wyoming raptor experts and others are wary about the impact the adaptable and aggressive barred owls could have on native species like great gray owls. 

Those concerns prompted the Teton Raptor Center to initiate the tracking project. Bedrosian and his team aim to tag the female’s wily mate, along with any chicks that hatch from a nest the pair is currently tending. The goal is to gather data on the birds’ movement and behavior to see if and how it’s impacting other raptors.

“I’m not suggesting we do anything right now, but with any invasive species, it’s always easiest to do action at the beginning rather than being reactionary later,” Bedrosian said. Information gathering is step one. 

Potential competition

Barred owls are similar in size to great horned owls, but lack the distinctive “horns.” They are similar in profile to great gray owls, but are smaller and have black eyes in contrast to the great grays’ yellow ones. 

In Washington, Oregon and California, their negative impacts on federally protected northern spotted owls have prompted wildlife authorities to classify them as invasive. Barred owls, which are territorial and eat a variety of prey, have edged out the more shy and specialized spotted owls. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has wrestled with the issue for years, even resorting to killing barred owls to help prevent further damage to the declining spotted owls. Those conflicts stirred up concern after the nesting pair was documented in Wyoming by nature photographer Tom Stanton. 

But Wyoming, unlike the PNW, has limited data.

The relationship between barred and spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest is “one of the most extensively studied cases of competitive exclusion in the history of wildlife ecology,” said Wyoming Fish and Game Nongame Bird Biologist Zach Wallace.

Meanwhile, Wallace said, “next to nothing is known about potential competition between barred owls and great gray owls.”

The Wyoming project, he said, is a good step toward filling in that information gap. That’s why his agency helped support the application for a grant that’s helping to fund it. 

The National Park Service is also in the loop on the project and monitoring the situation, Bedrosian said. 

Data gathering 

Barred owl sightings are not unheard of in Wyoming — the 2023 report is just the first documentation of a nesting pair. What scientists are trying to understand now is what the nesting birds do year round, and if others are present in the state and pose competition to other owls. 

Teton Raptor Center is approaching the questions with a multi-pronged strategy. One prong involves analyzing years of historic acoustic data in the region.

The center also received grants from the Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition, the Jackson Hole Community Foundation and the Jackson Conservation District to help monitor the birds with GPS transmitters, satellite trackers and acoustic recorders. 

The team this spring placed recorders in roughly 200 spots in the Grand Teton National Park vicinity — those recorders yielded proof that at least one other individual, likely a bachelor male, has been in the region.

The final piece is the tracking. The hope is to tag each member of the nesting family, Bedrosian said. The owls produced three chicks in 2023, but their nest failed in 2024. They are nesting again currently, though it’s unknown how many eggs they have. 

But if they get trackers on all of the owls, ecologists can better understand their territory, where they spend the winter months, where their offspring go and if there is competition with other species. 

“One of the biggest concerns is the potential impact on other species that aren’t used to this generalist, very aggressive predator,” Bedrosian said. 

“Where this bird has been located is a historic great gray owl territory that is now vacant,” he continued. “And so did the barred owls push out the great gray? We don’t know. But if you take evidence from the Pacific Northwest with the spotted owls, it doesn’t look good.”