FLDS members arrested after tractor rampage
 
By JAYNE HANSON
Today's News-Herald - Lake Havasu City, Arizona
 
COLORADO CITY — Two members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were arrested Tuesday when they allegedly violated a state trust agreement after they trespassed on old family land and plowed under a young crop of winter wheat.

Richard C. Jessop, 37, and Thomas L. Jessop, 21, both of Colorado City, were arrested by Mohave County Sheriff’s Office deputies for their alleged involvement in a tractor rampage on a plot of land in the Colorado City area causing an estimated $10,000 damage to winter wheat crops, according the MCSO.

Richard Jessop was arrested on charges of felony criminal damage and misdemeanor criminal trespassing and Thomas Jessop was arrested on a charge of misdemeanor criminal trespassing.

The incident began Monday night at approximately 11:30 p.m. when the reporting party, who the sheriff’s office decline to identify, contacted Colorado City Marshal’s Office in regard to his observance of two tractors plowing and tilling his fields in the night, the MCSO said. Apparently the Colorado City Marshal’s Office officer told the Jessop’s to leave, the press release said.

The reporting party reported the Colorado City Marshal’s Office officer was more concerned with the court order than with the criminal activity at hand. It was after that the reporting party contacted MCSO to intervene in the situation, a MCSO press release said.

The Salt Lake Tribune’s blog "Plural Life" by Brook Adams reported the land in question was farmed by the Jessop family in the early 1970s and was part the FLDS’s United Effort Plan Trust, which controls property, homes and businesses in Colorado City and Hildale, Utah.

Amid allegations of FLDS mismanagement, the trust was taken over in 2005 by the courts, which appointed a special fiduciary. The fiduciary was order to oversee reforms that would do away with the communal living concept and restore private property ownership.

The fiduciary apparently leased the land to Shane Stubbs, who had called in the incident to the sheriff’s office, the blog said.

The UEP includes a temporary restraining order stipulation prohibiting unauthorized use or removal of trust property, according to Adams’ blog. If the stipulation is violated, criminal trespassing charges apply.

But FLDS spokeman Willie Jessop told the Deseret News, "It's the church's land," "They've been farming it for 30 years. When did they get terminated for being on it?"

Mohave County Sheriff deputies made two attempts to contact the FLDS-manned tractors, the first was when a deputy pulled his fully marked vehicle ahead of the two working tractors in the field and, with hand raised, motioned the tractors to stop. The request was disregarded, MCSO said.

"The deputy would have had grounds to pull his firearm, but he didn’t," said Trish Carter, public information officer for MCSO. "He pulled his vehicle ahead of the tractor a second time, this time standing in front of the tractor, he motioned for it to stop. It finally did," she said.

According to the press release, the operator of the lead tractor, Richard Jessop, was uncooperative and he would not identify himself, turned off the tractor’s engine, or answer any of the deputies’ questions. He was taken into custody at about 2:05 p.m. without incident, was transported and booked into the Mohave County Jail in Kingman, the press release said.

The second tractor operator, Thomas Jessop, was cited and released at the scene and the tractors were removed from the property, according to MCSO.

According to Adams’ blog, FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop asked Stubbs, a former FLDS member, for a documentation of a lease but Stubbs failed to produce one.

Furthermore, the blog reported Willie Jessop characterized the arrest as retaliation for the county having to move its multi-use facility off property owned by Mohave County Community College.

MCC requested Mohave County move the facility, used by social services and law enforcement agencies, and the county’s supervisors voted 2-1 Monday to give up its physical presence in the community, the blog said.

In earlier reports of the Today’s News-Herald, the Mohave County Supervisors’ Monday vote was to vacate the MCC campus due to an expiring lease. The county expressed no opposition to MCC’s decision to not renew the lease term, the reports said.

You may contact the reporter at jhanson@havasunews.com.
 
havasunews.com
Originally published Wednesday, March 4, 2009
 
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