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152stormThe engine of the Alaskan Revenge could be heard to drop in rpmsas I stood and looked around at my fellow officers to see what exactlyhad happened. Officer Howard Oliver had been the one to fire the twoquick buckshot blasts that had saved our lives. Now the Alaskan Revengewas in reverse, backing away from our position, and apparently notunder command or control.The gillnetters accused the officer of an “unwarranted shooting.”The injured skipper of the Alaskan Revenge, twenty-four-year-oldWilliam Carlson, had to be airlifted by helicopter to HarborviewMedical Center in Seattle. As reported in the Seattle Times, hesuffered paralysis of the left arm and leg after the shooting, “braindamage, blunted mental and psychological processes, disfigurement,pain, amnesia and fatigue.” The scene was played in the media asthough the injured Carlson were a martyr, seriously injured whiletrying to protect his livelihood. But Haw says Carlson was not alicensed gillnet fisherman.The shooting led to a march in Olympia and a speech by JimJohnson, an assistant attorney general and lead lawyer for the state,“to tumultuous cheers regarding the immorality of Judge Boldt’sruling” and what Johnson characterized as “morally reprehensible”law. Candidates for governor weighed in: “I would have done a lotbefore this even happened [if I had been governor],” said Republicancandidate John Spellman. “I would have gotten the fishermen andthe [State] Department of Fisheries together for negotiations.”The behavior of the state caught the attention of national media.“Washington State legal officials refused to enforce Boldt’s order,”noted the Washington Post. “They instead denounced the judge, andencouraged fishermen to believe his decision upholding treaty rightswas capricious and unlikely to stand up on appeal.”To make matters worse, the fisheries management system was outof control, says Haw, with an excess of commercial fishing licensesand a “lack of authority” on the part of the state “to control mixed