Across the Tri-Cities this summer, human-bear conflicts have risen to the point where some residents are deciding to take matters into their own hands.
Earlier this week, three people were arrested north of Mundy Park on charges of obstructing conservation officers as they attempted to deal with a family of bears habituated to humans and their garbage.
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“If [an officer] arrests somebody, and there’s a phone on them, [they] are permitted to search and seize that phone for the purposes of collecting or preserving evidence related to the offence,” Kyla Lee, a Vancouver criminal lawyer, told The Tri-City News.
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“You can’t force the person to to give you evidence against them. Now, if the person consented, if [the officer] said, ‘Hey, will you unlock your phone?’ and they consented and unlocked it, there are additional legal obligations on the officer to say, ‘You don’t have to. You have the right to talk to a lawyer before you do this,’” said Lee.
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