Should raid be probed?

LAYTON — Congress should investigate federal law enforcement's raid in San Juan County late last week, three of Utah's four GOP congressmen said Saturday.

U.S. Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, both R-Utah, said in interviews at the state GOP convention that they doubt the Democratic-controlled Senate will do that.

The raid "was outrageous," said Bennett, who faces at least three challengers within his own party in his 2010 re-election.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said he didn't see the need for such force in the raids carried out by the FBI, National Park Service and other federal officers.

Nineteen Utahns, four Coloradans and one person from New Mexico were indicted by the U.S. Attorney's Office in illegally collecting and/or selling ancient Indian artifacts.

Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who is running against Bennett next year, said while as the state's chief law enforcement officer he doesn't second-guess his federal colleagues, he wasn't told about the raid beforehand, either.

The few state GOP delegates from southeastern Utah who drove for hours up to north Davis County for the convention also had hard feelings.

"It was Gestapo tactics," said Larry Sorrell, a rancher from San Juan County.

After being arrested and charged with the federal crime of illegally taking an Indian artifact from federal land, local physician James Redd apparently killed himself Thursday night.

"(Redd) was our family doctor," Sorrell said. "We've known him a long time. (The federal officials) overstepped their authority big time."

It was certainly inappropriate, Bennett said, to go into a person's home and for 10 hours search for "just one" Indian relic, and "put them in handcuffs, wearing flak vests and with automatic weapons drawn."

"I'm very concerned about it," Hatch said. "It seems like overkill to me to do that with these people, one a doctor, a pillar of his community. I'd call for a (U.S. Senate) investigation. But I don't chair (and control) the Judiciary Committee."

Hatch said he doubts that the Democratic chairman will conduct such an investigation. "But we should."

Bennett said he doesn't sit on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate (as Hatch does). But when the Interior Department's budget comes before his appropriations committee, he will be asking questions about how the raid was conducted.

As a freshman minority member in the 435-member House, Chaffetz has almost no chance to get hearings in that body.

Shurtleff said local federal officials, like the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, usually tell him when they are conducting an investigation and plan arrests in Utah.

"But I heard nothing about this beforehand," he said. "We've had strained relations with the U.S. Attorney's Office for about a year and a half. We're trying to rectify that."

Having said that, Shurtleff said that "certainly" federal authorities "have to enforce the law, and protecting antiquities is part of that." It was how that was done that bothers him, he said.

E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com, araymond@desnews.com