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[charlotte49er]

I guess it's okay to dump trash, but Cook County, IL bans detectorists!



If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything!

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

What got metal detecting on cook county agenda ... TO BEGIN WITH ? I mean , what precipitated this ? Why was it on their radar ? Certainly not the mantra of "holes" ... with terrain like that ? So why then did it even come up?

 

[garyo1954]

Tom, it's always the holes/insurance liability.

Same reasoning you can't take plants from a park, or rocks from a beach. If everybody took one plant, or one rock they place would be destroyed.
So the city enacts a law that nobody can take anything because it destroys the beauty of the place and cost money to replace it.
If everybody dug one hole, same outcome.

Ever notice these laws always start in most populated areas and make their way to the smaller communities?
More people using the facilities means a better chance for someone to get away with damaging something and a better chance someone gets hurt due to that action.

Could be someone sprained their ankle somewhere and is threatening to sue a city for not maintaining a safe environment. Doesn't mean it happened in Cook County. Doesn't mean it was a hole left by a detectionist. Could have been a kid with a spoon, a dog burying a bone, somebody practicing their golf swing. You never know.

But faced with the possibility of a lawsuit, and possible future lawsuits, they take action to protect the city.
The new law displaces the good people, and the bad element to other areas, and the cycle starts again.

It is a shame the irrespective element will never accept any social responsibility, and will even go so far as to justify their action by saying, "What are they going to do? They will never know who dug that hole, (stole that plant), (picked up that rock)."

 

[Tom_in_CA]

garyo1954. Good answer. You say the county personell's objection to md'ing could be:

a) holes that create a possible trip hazzard (and not "cosmetics" in forest like that). Or

b) the aspect of "taking" or "harvesting" or "collecting", via the old addage of "if everybody took one pretty rock home, then pretty soon, the beach or forest or whatever, is no longer pretty.

And I agree. Both of these reasons could be reason to forbid detecting, if some desk-bound bureaucrat thought about it long enough and hard enough. Sure, such things could be applied to the question of "should we allow detecting?". But it still doesn't answer the question of: why was this question even on their plate, to begin with?

And so too might it have been an answer of "historicity" (aka cultural heritage, etc...). That seems to be fairly clear in some emails exchanged from Cook county authorities, and md'rs on the subject. I can't find the link right now, but perhaps someone can find it and link it here? The context of the email exchanges from the comissioners, at least at first, made it clear that it only concerned historic spots in the forest, "not all cook county land". So you can therefore add a possible option (c) to the above list of possible reasons detecting was banned.

But all this still fails to answer the question of: Why did any of THOSE reasons "come on their radar" as something that needs to be addressed? I mean, what brought this up to them? Any such reasons can be a reason for any beach, park, school, etc... to enact a law or rule, afterall. Yet as we know, there's no shortage of public places where no one thinks of such silly things. So why did it become a vote or decision-needed-issue here?

The reason I needle at this, is I suspect I know the answer: If the evolution of this particular case could be un-veiled, I have no doubt, that the reason it "came up for review" or "got a new rule" and so forth, was that someone must've gone in asking cook county "can I metal detect?". THAT is what probably got it on their radar as a "pressing issue that needs to be addressed", and NOT the (a), (b), or (c) above, even though, sure, in-the-end, as something to refer to as their reason for their "no", it's their go-to reason for the rule they just invented.