Steve Phillips and Perry Massey's arrest in Alabama

[Anonymous]

Howdy everybody...
I receieved this e-mail today from Steve Phillips who owns Southern Divers Supply in Alabama. Earlier this year him and Perry Massie, the president of the Outdoor Channel were arrested in Selma. They had received permission from the State Historical Commision to dive in the river in Selma only to be arrested when they stepped back on shore. Steve has a major effort going to change the laws as they are written. These laws effect all of us as relic hunters. Please go to his site to get the whole story. I will put a link below. I was in the same condition that Steve and Perrie are in a few years back. I had received permission from the Corps of Engineers to do what I was doing and got nailed by the state Historical Commision once they found out I had made some nice finds. Here is the e-mail and a link to his site.
December 17, 2003
Alabama's Unfriendly Diving Rules
Friends, divers, and all interested parties, In 1999 the Alabama State Legislature passed a new law to control the salvage of sunken ships in the public waters of Alabama. This law was passed without any input from the 100,000 divers in the state of Alabama. After the law was passed we divers were made aware of the law. The Alabama Historical Commission was granted permission to write the regulations that control the shipwrecks and diving on them. Don't confuse the Historical Commission with the State Department of Archives and History. The State Department of Archives and History is interested in history and do a great job in the preservation of history. The Historical Commission has overstepped their boundaries and is attempting to control all the relic hunting, gold dredging and diving in general in our state. Southern Skin Divers Supply and many other divers have been trying to work with the Historical Commission with no success. They told us that the law would not affect recreational divers, relic hunters, or gold prospecting. This was not true. We are being mistreated and put upon by the Historical Commission employees. The Legislature did not want these unfriendly regulations but that is what we got.
Alabama has 77,000 miles of inland waterways. We have more than any other state in the lower 48. Florida has 11,000. Most of our public waters have never been dived. The Historical Commission does not have divers or historians. They are archaeologists who know nothing about diving or history. Archaeologists study prehistory and how to apply for grants. Money is their main interest, history and diving are not what they care about.
In October of this year I was arrested along with Perry Massie who is the head of the Outdoor Channel on TV. He was going to make a TV show about diving in Alabama similar to the one he made of us diving for fossils and relics in South Carolina last year. We were diving at Selma where I have dived for 30 years. We were not diving on a sunken ship. There are no sunken ships at Selma. This site has been dived by hundreds of divers, even before my time. My boat was confiscated and Perry and I were charged with a felony. We had to post bond and Perry's 8 year old daughter had to see her father arrested. We did not commit any crime. We violated no laws and were diving within the regulations of the Historical Commission.
We were arrested anyway. It's all about money. The Historical Commission wants my Civil War Collection so they can sell it and pay their salary with the proceeds. According to the regulations that they wrote the Historical Commission gets to keep whatever they can steal from divers. I know that it is hard to understand but it is true. I had already agreed to loan my entire collection to the state to be put on display. They had to insure and display the collection but they could not sell it. It's all about money.
The charges against Perry and I should soon be dropped because we have not done anything wrong. What I worry about is the other divers who will be harassed under these thugs at the Historical Commission. I do not want my sons, or any other divers bothered by these people. If you want to dive in a swimming hole and find a coin or bottle, that's just fine. I don't want you to feel threatened by your own state employees. I want you to take an interest in your own freedoms and the future divers that will come along. We need to get our Legislature to fix this bad law and even worse regulations. We can do this in court if we have to but it would be better if our own representatives would fix the problems they created. Bad laws can be fixed. Please write your state legislators. We have made a big file of correspondences since 1999 with the Historical Commission, State Legislators, the Governor and others concerning our problems with the Alabama Historical Commission. Remember you have a dog in this fight. You are a free American citizen, you are not a subject. You do not have rulers, in fact you make the rules. Our Federal and State government is good, not bad. It is us. We have to keep an eye on our employees in our government to make sure they do for us, not to us. Please take charge, write your Legislators.
Thanks,
Steve Phillips
Southern Skin Divers Supply
Birmingham, Alabama
205-595-3052
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http://www.ssdsupply.com/
Steve and Perrie would appreciate any help any of us can give them.
Ronnie M. Hyer (The Mayor)

 

[Anonymous]

Good grief! that is OUTRAGEOUS <img src="/metal/html/angry.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=":mad"> <img src="/metal/html/angry.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=":mad"> <img src="/metal/html/angry.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=":mad"> sounds like they are nothing more than a bunch of legalized criminals and highwaymen! too lazy and under-funded to recover the stuff themselves, so they just come up with ridiculous legislation such as this (which they sneak through the back door) in order to STEAL your finds from YOU. Stuff that you have in your posession because YOU have the drive, determination and PASSION to bother to spend thousands of dollars of YOUR hard earned money, and probably hundreds of hours of YOUR LIFE, researching (and then searching)for the finds you have worked so hard for, that are now in your posession. It REALLY dogs me off that these pen pushing bureaucrats can be left to there own devices, and come up with these kinds of draconian 'stealth' measures in order to rip you off. I'm in the UK, and we have a similar sort of situation going on with the 'Countryside stuardship' scheme, which in essence, is bribing landowners to not allow detectorists on to their land. My understanding of this ridiculous legislation so far is: if you are a landowner and say your land amounts to 500 acres, well if 1 arce of that land has some kind of 'Historical site' on it, then you are not allowed to let detectorists on ANY OF YOUR LAND! (or the scheme will not pay you). We also have a scheme / law in place whereby, if you find ANYTHING over 300 years old, you HAVE to report it! and when you report it, if they are interested in 'AQUIRING' your find for a museum, a committee of so called 'EXPERTS' will come up with a derisory figure to pay you for 'your find'. This proccess can take anything up to 3 years! most detectorists are up in arms about this shambolic farce! but the powers that be don't listen to us ... after all, what do we know? we're just a bunch of amateurs, only doing this hobby to line our pockets! whereas THEY have studied at university for a few years, and are 'specialists in post hole excavations' or whatever. Most of these 'experts' have probably never had dirt under their finger nails! It's us 'AMATEURS' that are out there in the fields, in baking sunshine and sub-zero temperatures, recovering important AND inconsequential finds before the plough and / or acidic fertilizers DESTROY these finds. Finds that these so called 'experts' want to leave in the ground 'for future generations'. It all boils down to sour grapes, because WE have the expertise and equipment to recover these metallic finds today, whereas the 'experts' are underfunded, and bitter and twisted because they spent years at university, and get all excited about a 'post hole' which amounts to nothing more than a stain in the soil. Ask any average Joe what he or she would rather see; a stain in the soil, or an American civil war artefact or Saxon brooch???? NO CONTEST! I REST MY CASE YOUR HONOUR! <img src="/metal/html/wink.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=""> <img src="/metal/html/biggrin.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt="">

 

[Anonymous]

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