Sunday, September 30, 2018

FISHERIES CRIME SHOULDN'T PAY IN NEW BEDFORD




Since that was done, his name faded out of the news.

But no one can carry out such broad-based offenses on their own, even though there has been little mention of Rafael's henchmen, who profited well from knowingly supporting his scheme, in the news.


The document also increased the number of alleged violations to 88; such allegations included misreporting of the species caught—which was the heart of Rafael’s poaching scheme—to fishing gear violations and violations of various observer requirements.

No one seems to be particularly concerned about stiffer penalties being assessed against Carlos Rafael, except, most probably, for Rafael himself.  But there is a remarkable amount of pushback against NOAA going after the captains.


“he calls himself the ‘Codfather.’  That’s the name he gave himself.  Likening himself to a mafia don.  He models himself as the head of the criminal enterprise.  Why anyone would think he is the only bad actor when he himself molded himself as the head of a criminal enterprise just defies logic.”
But logic often gets twisted into unrecognizable shapes when fish are involved.


“NOAA taking action against Rafael’s captains crosses a line.”
It’s hard for anyone outside New Bedford to understand why.


“[F]ishermen are allowed to catch more of comparatively common species than rare ones.  That can quickly become a problem: You might own a big slice of the haddock pie, but if your net happens to catch flounder, you must either stop fishing or rent more flounder quota from your peers.  Rafael simply mislabeled the other kinds of groundfish as haddock, an abundant species for which he owned millions of pounds…”
For most fishermen, that would be a difficult scam to pull off, but Rafael’s operation was big enough to facilitate such fraud.  Yet he couldn’t do it all by himself.

“[NOAA] requires fishing boats to report the species and weight of their catch, among other information, each time they return from the sea.  Seafood dealers, meanwhile, have to submit their own reports detailing what they purchase from incoming vessels, which NOAA uses to verify fishermen’s accounts.  Rafael, though, was exploiting a gaping loophole.  Because he owned both boats and a dealership, he could instruct his captains to misreport their catch, and then he could falsify the dealer reports to corroborate the lie…  [emphasis added]”
The captains were thus active and willing participants in the scheme.  After all, when Rafael made more money, even if from illegal actions, they made more money, too. 

But money never stays in one person’s pocket.  Rafael’s crimes brought money not only to himself and his captains, but to the people who crewed on his boats, the businesses that supplied and supported the vessels, truckers who moved the fish, ice houses and such.  Beyond that, the money spread out into the greater community, supporting everything from waterfront bars to grocery stores and gas stations to, in all likelihood, even churches and day care centers.

As a result, to many in New Bedford, Rafael was a sort of Robin Hood, who fought an oppressive government bureaucracy, stealing fish from the “rich” feds to give to his “poor” community.  When he was sentenced, the Boston Globe reported the reaction of one of his crewmen, who was largely sympathetic to Rafael, despite his crimes.

“’He kept hundreds of jobs afloat,’ said Shawn Machie, an Acushnet [Massachusetts] fisherman who works on one of Rafael’s boats.  Machie, 47, who has 3-month-old twins, said Rafael was forced to skirt regulations that prevent fishermen from making a good living.
“’It wouldn’t be like this if it weren’t for unfair regulations,’ Machie said.  ‘Why does the government got to squeeze people into a position where they gotta do stuff like this to survive?’”
The fact that the same arguments could be made in support of pimps, drug dealers and other species of criminal that haunt economically-depressed communities, including New Bedford, probably never occurred to Machie.  It’s a near certainty that he’d object very strongly if he heard outlaw fishermen tossed into the same bucket with more traditional felons, even though someone looking in from the outside might have a hard time telling them apart.

Machie isn’t alone.  It seems that New Bedford, as a whole, is willing to give an entire category of criminal—those who helped Rafael poach fish on a wholesale scale—a free pass.  Their thinking is clearly spelled out in a comment made by the city’s mayor, Mitchell, who said

“The real culprit is Carlos Rafael.  To my mind, it would be overkill to go after the captains who were doing his bidding and on whose good graces their livelihood depended.  The overall goal should be to punish Carlos Rafael but not to damage the port.  [emphasis added]”
But what if the port, or at least a significant part of it, was complicit in Rafael’s scheme, as the captains certainly were?  

After all, if we were talking about another sort of crime, no one would question the need to bring enforcement actions against everyone who directly and intentionally supported the scheme.



There is little doubt that some of the money El Chapo spent, and he reportedly spent quite a bit, went to people who needed it badly.

But there doesn’t seem to be anyone out there who is making the argument that, while El Chapo deserves to be punished, the various killers, drug dealers, smugglers and other assorted criminals should escape punishment, merely because they did his bidding and depended on him for their livelihood.

Yet Rafael depended on his captains to break fisheries laws, just as El Chapo depended on his trusted smugglers to get drugs across the Rio Grande.  For both, the entire criminal enterprise could never have survived, much less grown large, without the willing help of numerous underlings who knowingly broke the law in return for financial gains.

Thus, NOAA’s proposed sanctions against Rafael’s captains, as well as Rafael himself, are an entirely appropriate way to punish those who helped Rafael break the law (and it should be noted that, for the captains, things could be worse, as the sanctions are solely civil, and bring no criminal liability at all).

Yes, a lot of people and businesses in New Bedford made some good money from Rafael’s crimes, and they don’t want their cash flow to end.

But that’s the risk you take when you abet crime.


“I wish every member of our enforcement branch godspeed that they root out every single criminal that dishonors the honest fishermen I know.”
To that, we should all say, “Amen.”



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