You must be talking to them—you must. That's not a question.
Are the officers afraid to enforce the law? This sounds like a pretty rough business out there in the dark. I wouldn't blame them. I would suggest that cutting off the head of the beast that is the market might be a heck of a lot better way to go. However, to do that, you're going to need to have much better intelligence and much better knowledge of what's going on with these creatures once they're caught.
Has that sort of thinking been going on?