Clash A First For ‘Bunny Hunters’ Mangan’s Shotgun Approach Surprises Cb Buffs, Who Say They Work With Police

People who play an automotive version of hide-and-seek called “bunny hunting” say they’ve never been treated the way Spokane’s police chief handled three of their friends.

“Generally speaking, when we’re out in front of someone’s house, and someone’s asked what we’re doing, we explain and there’s not a problem,” said John Jans, a regular participant in the game played in cars with citizens band radios.

Jans said he was among those playing Friday night when Chief Terry Mangan had his run-in with three of the CB buffs.

Alerted by a neighbor that a Chevrolet Blazer was idling on a public road outside his rural Spokane Valley home, Mangan approached the men with a loaded shotgun. He ordered them out of the vehicle, made them identify themselves and patted two of them down.

There have been threats against his life, Mangan said later, and he was worried the men would harm him or his wife, who was due home any time.

The sheriff’s department is investigating Mangan’s actions.

Two of the men in the Blazer, Bill Nelson, 24, and Bruce Rakowski, 38, said Mangan pointed the gun at their heads and threatened to shoot them. They would not identify their companion, saying he fears retaliation if he spoke about the incident.

On Monday, Mangan said he did nothing wrong. He denied pointing the gun at the men or making threats.

Jans said he had just spotted the Blazer in the distance when he heard Nelson’s voice over his CB, telling the pursuers to “give up the chase.”

As the designated “bunny,” Nelson and his buddies were broadcasting continuously so the other players could track their signal.

“They broadcast over the radio that they had a shotgun shoved in their face,” said Jans, who waited for the Blazer at the end of the dirt road leading to Mangan’s home. “I keyed back to them and said, ‘What went wrong?’ and finally they keyed back and said they couldn’t talk anymore.”

Jans said the three men met him about five minutes later. He followed them to a grocery store, where they called the sheriff’s department to report an assault.

Mangan said the men shouldn’t have been playing the game in a secluded area, where neighbors might get alarmed.

“I proceeded to tell them this is not a very smart thing to do,” the chief said.

Mangan’s comment is out of line, said Jans, a 20-year-old part-time CB salesman who has played the game for seven years under the handle Poison. He said CB buffs patrol neighborhoods on Halloween, help with Bloomsday and perform other community service.

“We work with police,” he said. “We’re not causing problems (by bunny hunting). We’re not doing any harm to anybody’s property or anything.”

The games, normally held on Friday nights, sometimes draw 20 teams or more, said Jans. It’s played nationwide, although sometimes under different names and rules. Some groups use it as training to find lost CBers.

Another player, Craig Smith, said he sometimes takes his girlfriend’s preteen daughter and nephew with him on the outings. “They get a kick out of it,” he said.

Smith, who goes by the handle Rocker, said Spokane County sheriff’s deputies questioned the group about a year ago, when it gathered at a convenience store at the start of a chase.

“They pulled up and ran checks on all of us, asked us what we were doing and told us to have a good time,” he said.

“I know about bunny hunting,” said former Sheriff Larry Erickson, now executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

Erickson said Mangan did nothing illegal, if everything happened the way the chief said it did.

“Certainly he had a right to go out and determine what they were up to,” Erickson said. “He would normally be armed most of the time anyway.”

But Smith said his friends’ run-in with Mangan makes him nervous.

“I don’t want to go out and every five minutes be pulled over because I’ve got an antenna on my car,” he said.

, DataTimes