REGIONAL- Officials at Voyageurs National Park have come under more criticism on social media in the wake of the release of body camera footage last week that shows the altercation that led two park rangers to attack and tase an Ash River businessman last June.
The National Park Service released the body camera footage from Rangers Steve Pederson and Ryan Houghton last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Timberjay, and the newspaper posted them to its Facebook account last Wednesday. Another copy of Houghton’s 14-minute body cam video was posted the same day on the Voyageurs National Park Group forum. Public opinion appears to be coming down largely in Ebel’s favor.
“Best that can be said for the rangers is they exercised poor judgment and bad discretion. The arrest protected no one from anything and has served only to damage relations with the local community and park visitors,” one comment read.
Others offered similar comments, noting that it appears the rangers had escalated the situation needlessly.
“They could have followed and helped him, but instead they made this a dangerous situation, not the operator going 3 MPH,” read another commenter, adding: “The only person who got hurt was the operator at the hands of the officers who were just pissed the operator wasn’t bowing to their authority. Those officers should be gone.”
“Absolutely zero concern about the safety of the people on the house boat, also the property that he owns. Those rangers should be ashamed of themselves. Justin was trying to get them in a safe position for the rangers to make contact,” said another.
The few supporters of the rangers’ actions honed-in on Ebel’s decision to ignore orders to stop his boat.
“The man asked for it and he got it. Cooperate with law enforcement officers and this will not happen,” one person wrote.
A Park Service spokesperson confirmed this week that both Pederson and Houghton remain on active duty in the park despite the incident.
Document review
Along with the videos, the National Park Service released roughly 100 pages of documents related to the June 2022 incident, including four reports filed by VNP personnel – an incident report by Pederson, supplemental reports by Houghton and Ranger Kevin Grossheim, who observed the houseboat on the rocks and later treated Ebel’s taser wounds, and supervising ranger Josh Wentz’s telephone interview with the elderly couple on the houseboat. While all names have been redacted from the first three reports by NPS, the authors have been determined by the Timberjay through their descriptions of their action in the event.
Radio logs, weather information, taser discharge data, and hospital record were also included in the records released.
Grossheim, Pederson and Houghton first observed the houseboat on the rocks near the Ash River Visitor Center as they were returning to the fuel dock there on a small barge towing some buoys. The barge approached the houseboat, but no one was observed on deck. Grossheim called Ebel’s Voyaguers Houseboats to ensure they were aware of the situation, and was told that Justin Ebel was on the way to deal with the situation. Meanwhile, Pederson and Houghton transferred to the smaller Lund ranger boat. Pederson reported Houghton as saying he wanted to contact the operator about violations they had observed – improper display of registration and operating on the wrong side of navigational buoys. This is the only statement in the reports the Timberjay found as a possible reason for later making contact with the houseboat out on the lake.
According to the reports, before the rangers could make contact with the houseboat, Ebel arrived in his service boat and the rangers moved a few hundred feet away to observe. The elderly couple told the Timberjay that the rangers had made an initial inquiry as to their status before Ebel arrived, but no such contact was reported by any of the rangers, and Ebel told the Timberjay that the rangers had not made contact before he arrived. The couple may have been referring instead to a DNR conservation officer who was reportedly at the visitor center and asked the couple if they needed any help.
A lingering puzzle has been why the rangers allowed Ebel and the houseboat to proceed into open waters before making contact with the houseboat, rather than do so when the boat was readily available to them near the visitor center. The houseboat had traveled about half mile and was near the narrows to Sullivan Bay when the rangers finally contacted them and ordered them to move out farther into the channel where it would be safer to talk with them.
According to their reports, the rangers delayed contact in an effort to avoid a conflict with Ebel.
“Based on information from other federal officers and local DNR, (Ebel) has been known to have a temper and be aggressive towards law enforcement. (Pederson) had even stated to give him space and time to leave the area before contacting the houseboat, attempting to minimize contact with (Ebel),” Houghton reported.
“I told Ranger (Houghton) we should give them plenty of space to work because I did not want to fight with (Ebel). My past experiences with (Ebel) led me to believe he could start an altercation if he felt bothered,” Pederson reported.
That past experience involved issuing a citation to Ebel for speeding on a snowmobile the previous winter, in which Ebel refused to comply with his orders and spoke in a challenging manner, according to Pederson’s report. Ebel told the Timberjay that after the incident he called park superintendent Bob DeGross to register a complaint about Pederson’s behavior.
Contrary to their reported concerns about engaging Ebel, the body camera footage shows the two law enforcement officers were immediately aggressive with Mr. Ebel once they made contact and dismissed Ebel when he informed them of his plan to bring the houseboat to calmer waters, where he said the rangers could make contact with the houseboat operators. Within a minute of their initial encounter with Ebel, one of the rangers had deployed one of the boat’s rubber bumpers, suggesting an intent to possibly board the boat, a highly escalatory action.
In both his report and probable cause statements for Ebel’s citations, Pederson stated that the houseboat started to follow their orders to reverse course as they neared the narrows, and then stopped— a change they assumed was at Ebel’s direction. This is contradicted by the man driving the houseboat, who told both Wentz and the Timberjay that he was unable to turn the boat around because of the wind.
“The wind was blowing like crazy…I tried everything I could and I absolutely could not get the boat backed up to get the clearance to turn it around,” Wentz reported the man saying during an interview a week after the incident.
The reports of the rangers contacting, pursuing and boarding Ebel’s boat in order to subdue and detain him are consistent with the video footage and mostly consistent with Ebel’s recounting of the events to the Timberjay in February. Differences in their accounts are likely due to the fact that the rangers had body camera footage to use when writing their reports, while Ebel was using his memory of a traumatic event that took place seven months prior to his interview.
Pederson summarized the force he used against Ebel as consisting of verbal commands, grabbing his arm, applying a pressure point beneath his nose, tackling, holding him down with his body weight, and handcuffs.