Wilds Agents Play Dirty Harry?

By Joe Bauman Deseret Morning News

When Utahns run across wildlife law enforcement in the wilds, they may expect a kindly but firm officer, someone like Sheriff Andy Taylor in the old television serial.

Instead, all too often officers “were playing Dirty Harry,” said Patrick Shea, one of the co-chairmen of the committee preparing recommendations for Jon Huntsman Jr. as he prepared to become Utah’s governor.

An example is offered by the state’s rural affairs coordinator, Gayle McKeachnie, the other co-chairman. Say a DWR officer stops drivers on the freeway and tickets them for speeding. “And they ask, ‘By what authority does a fish cop give me a ticket?’ And the officer points to his gun and says, ‘By that authority.’ “

Widespread resentment of a perceived overbearing attitude by wildlife officers was cited by the transition team that made recommendations about the future of the Utah Department of Natural Resources.

“It has a culture that often clashes with other divisions within the department and with the farming/ranching community as well as rural county government leaders,” said the team’s report.

Members of the transition group found so much concern about the division they considered recommending that it be broken out of its current home, the Department of Natural Resources, and placed in the Department of Agriculture, which they thought might be able to keep better tabs on wildlife officers. In the end, they concluded that such a change would cost Huntsman too much political capital and didn’t recommend it.

Team members discussed the conflicts frankly, as reflected in a 2- inch-thick “transition book” of reports from their December meetings. Huntsman’s office has released the book to the media.

The report characterized Wildlife Resources as the largest division in Natural Resources and called it the “most difficult to manage” of any in the department.

Its funding comes from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, and from federal money derived from a sales tax on hunting and fishing gear, the report noted. These sources “give it a status of independence from the department and the Legislature.”

The committee heard comments that DWR law enforcers were insensitive to the public, which causes the division to lose public support, added the report.

A copy of the document was given to Mike Styler, appointed Natural Resources director in April. Styler said he believes Wildlife Resources is making “great progress.”

Shea is a Salt Lake lawyer who served during the Clinton presidency as director of the Bureau of Land Management and deputy director of the Interior Department. McKeachnie, lieutenant governor during the transition, became rural affairs coordinator after Huntsman took office.

In a Deseret Morning News telephone interview, both talked about reports of run-ins with wildlife officers.

Incidents happened in various parts of the state and were not confined to hunters suspected of violating hunting laws. Sometimes ordinary campers had bad experiences, Shea said. They “were treated as if they were criminals,” he added.

“Sometimes when you have a big truck and a big gun and a badge, and you’re not trained as a POST-certified law enforcement officer, you can get yourself in trouble.”

SWAT teams have their place, added Shea, “but not necessarily on the highways and byways of Utah.”

Sid Groll, the new law enforcement director for the Department of Natural Resources, said the officers are POST-certified. He said he hasn’t heard of an incident in which a gun is cited as authority for writing a ticket, and the department would disapprove of that approach.

McKeachnie said this was the third transition committee he served on, two for former Gov. Mike Leavitt and now for the Huntsman transition, and all featured such discussions about Wildlife Resources.

“The Division of Wildlife Resources is a target for a lot of people who are unhappy,” said McKeachnie. “And we received many comments.”

Several factors are at the heart of the concern, McKeachnie said.

— Aggressive attitude by law enforcement. “It doesn’t go over well with the public,” he said.

When someone is prosecuted for illegally killing a deer, wildlife managers can put more resources into the investigation “than most rural counties have” available for a murder case.

Up to five officers may gather evidence and prosecute a poaching case when “a county attorney prosecuting a serious crime doesn’t have 20 percent of the resources. . . . That irks people.”

— Wildlife Resources’ funding from sources other than taxation. “Over the years it’s been hard to get them to play as a team” with the rest of state government, he said. Staff members “have a different paymaster.”

— Habitat purchase. Wildlife Resources receives federal money that allows the division to purchase habitat for wild animals. “When a ranch comes up for sale, they can always outbid the neighbors” who might want to acquire the ranch themselves.

Past department directors have that the problem is Wildlife Resources needs adult supervision, McKeachnie said. That is, young officers come out of college with biology degrees and it’s hard for them to adjust to the real world.

Team members mulled over recommending that Wildlife Resources be sent to the Agriculture Department.

The report notes some commonality between the wildlife division and Agriculture: both provide forage for and habitat for livestock and wildlife, both deal with animal disease and health, and wild animals and livestock live on the same land, much of it owned by farmers and ranchers.

But neither department favored the change and the transition group decided, as the report puts it, that the switch probably could not be accomplished “without burning up too much political support for the governor.”

Still, some members of the committee thought it was a good idea, “and perhaps over time could be accomplished.”

McKeachnie said Natural Resources officials believed splitting off Wildlife Resources would be a bad idea. Agriculture Department officials felt the same. “They didn’t want them,” he said.

So the recommendation was dropped. But Styler got a copy of the report.

Huntsman’s office weighed in, too. The governor’s office thought Wildlife Resources needed to fit in better with other agencies, “and not be such a world to themselves,” McKeachnie said.

Styler said Natural Resources managers took the team’s recommendations seriously.

“We have gone into our law enforcement in both Wildlife Resources and State Parks, and made a concerted effort.” They were reminded that state employees are first stewards, “but we need to be responsible to the people of Utah who use those resources,” he said.

Law enforcement needs to be friendly, he said.

In many commercial enterprises, he said, the stores that succeed know “the customer is No. 1. They do everything they can to satisfy the customer.

“Well, we’re trying to adopt that same attitude.”

The department is there to add to the value of the state’s natural resources, Styler added, but also “to facilitate the good will of the people of Utah.”

Groll, appointed chief law officer for the department in May, said the department has held sensitivity training for its two enforcement teams, in Wildlife Resources and the Division of Parks and Recreation.

“We also have met on several occasions with the division directors and the chiefs of law enforcement, to talk in terms of how to develop cases, how to change an otherwise concerning situation . . . into a positive situation, if at all possible.”

When an officer is issuing a citation for overfishing, he might explain that fish are a limited resource, Groll said, giving “a better explanation of why there are laws against over-limits.”

Also, officers have been given more leeway. If someone forgets a license at home, or has left it in the car, a citation may not be issued immediately. Instead, an officer may check whether the person really has a license.

The department is looking into a “bit of a softer, more considerate approach” while not overlooking the rules it needs to follow in cases of violations.

“We’ve also given the officers a bit more discretion in evaluating a particular violation,” he said. Officers themselves had complained they needed more flexibility, he said.

“My focus was, how do we become better servants of our resources? And I think we’ve been working hard on that.” Over the the past several months, Groll added, the department has received several complimentary letters about officers’ behavior.

But McKeachnie did not seem convinced that permanent improvements had been made. “Some days you think you’re making good progress,” he said, “and other days you wonder if it is going to happen at all.”

E-mail: bau@desnews.com