Law Enforcement on Public Lands

[Nameless Range]

When it comes to the public lands experience and stewardship of our public lands, we more than often talk about forest/range health – the projects going on out there, the conifer encroachment, the fuels reductions. We’ll discuss road densities, travel plans, trails, etc. Often times, it is those features that physically exist (or don’t exist) on the landscape that we think drives our experiences out there. As a member of a county committee, as a local working group member, as first responder, and as citizen, a theme I have noticed over the last decade, and one I feel is actually reaching the point of a critical issue, is lack of law enforcement on public lands. It affects landowners adjacent , the public land user/lessee, and the resource . Tons of examples exist and I won’t expound on all I can think of.

The Law Enforcement Officers I have interacted with on public lands are doing mostly sacred work, so this isn’t me complaining about them. It is a concern that certain expenses of public lands are woefully under-patrolled. I have experienced a few camping trips with my family over the last few years where a bad actor or group of bad actors in our proximity gave a sense of lawlessness to the experience – an uncomfortableness. I see folks camped wayyyy more than their 2 week allotment (and have notified the authorities), I see frequent drug use, and I see folks ripping the country up with a seeming impunity.

I don’t know the exact stats, but when I think of the Forest I play in most – the Beaverhead-Deerlodge – there are something like 3 USFS LEOs covering over 3 million acres. They've basically each got their own Rhode Island, and don't work 24/7. Now, counties may have MOUs in place to patrol certain campgrounds at certain intervals, and MT FWP LEOs and even MHP might come to the aid of a situation if they can, but generally, there is a lack of enforcement presence and a damn-long response time if one is needed. Whether it is camping in one spot too long, drug use, violence, or just general lack of rule-following (closed roads, trails, shooting, trash, etc) – I believe as our public land use continues to drastically rise, the experience of users will diminish more than it has to if we don't get ahead of this.

Specifically, and why I write this post - 5 years ago, our local sheriff told a group I am a member of that he would never take his family camping at a local high mountain lake campground. It’s become a hotspot for certain denizens, the incident response time up there is closer to an hour than anything, and that that situation wasn’t going to change anytime soon. A member of the USFS said it was too dangerous for a campground host. Just a week ago, 5 years later, I heard the same thing from our new sheriff.

That there be beautiful and precious chunks of public land out there, and that they could be deemed unsafe or inappropriate places for families, is a failure I do not believe we should accept.

There are a couple current openings for LEO positions in this neck of the woods, but even if they were filled, there should be more positions. From what I have heard, I really don’t think it looks like more positions are on the horizon, but I feel like there should be, and for what it is worth, I will likely write my congressman. The USFS spends a fair bit of funds in other places, and I think prioritizing this is important, and I specifically mean incentivizing folks via higher pay and creating more FTEs.

I am curious – in your neck of the woods, do you feel like the amount of law enforcement on public lands is sufficient? Yes, or No, I'd be interested in where you see it working or don't, and why you think that is.

 

[MtnElk]

Definitely not sufficient here either, and I am not sure you are going to see an answer where someone says it is sufficient. I can think of two local areas nearby that are getting shredded because of lack of enforcement: Buffalo Creek and the BLM land just above Buena Vista.

Both can be plagued with 2+ week campers (more so on BLM than Buff Creek) and are exploited - primarily via OHV - the point where people just completely ignore signage, fences, barriers, etc. I won't mention the state from which most of the trucks, 400' campers and 2 OHVs per family member are from... but deep in their hearts, they don't seem to give a F about the rules in these areas.

2020 pushed a lot of not outdoorsy people into the outdoors. You'd always find TP and face wipes and crap near campsites here and there before it, but now, you can't seem to go to a campsite or BLM area that isn't littered with both of those things because these morons think its completely biodegradable... to say nothing of the nastiness of leaving that crap there. I didn't realize mega trailers didn't come with trash cans.

 

[FI460]

I've lived in Southern Oregon for almost 9 years now and I've never once seen a federal LEO out patrolling. Not to say that they don't, just that I suspect there are so few of them that I don't encounter them.

State wildlife officers are nearly as sparse. We only have 100 troopers for the entire state. Never had my hunting license checked here...

I think it's a severe problem across the west.

 

[brocksw]

Enforcement has been a real struggle in the DPG and always has been, I've often wondered how it is in other regions. For the last few years the Dakota Prairie Grasslands has had 1 LEO (1 year we had 0) to patrol the entire Dakota Prairie Grasslands (ND and SD). Thats 4 separate districts, in two states, where travel time from one end to the other is probably 6+ hours. It is not uncommon for our LEO to receive a call that needs to be investigated 3 hours away, only to arrive and have no one there(caller included). Then to get a second call thats 2.5 hrs back in the direction he just came from. He just spent most of an 8 hr day driving to two calls. Now picture deer season in ND, and his phone is ringing non-stop.

I've written formal letters for our chapter to the Missoula USFS office requesting LEO help and explaining the difficulties our current LEO faces. They are supposed to be hiring a second LEO this year, but as you mention, it will still be an uphill battle in terms of man power. I've been led to believe funding is the primary challenge, as the LEO's are not technically USFS employees, but federal employees allocated to the USFS for Law enforcement purposes. I don't understand everything I've heard about that though.

 

[Beignet]

It's just my own biased experience, but it always seems like the more crap someone has at a campsite the more likely it is that they'll be misbehaving. I'm not sure throwing one or two more patrolling officers at a vast area would really solve the problem, but it would sure be nice if they had the resources to at least focus on known problem areas.

Though not the formal definition of the term, it is a "tragedy of the commons" in a certain sense, where users of a resource can't be trusted to self-regulate for the overall good.

 

[smarandr]

Have a client that's a BLM ranger, and it's him and one other guy (maybe two now) that's incharge of all of eastern Idaho. That's a whole lot of acreage for one to three guys to patrol.

 

[2rocky]

I was amazed at the Kit carried by Washington State park personnel. The one I met last weekend looked like she was about to do a raid on a drug house

What you expect:

What they are wearing in the field:

Which tells me that the likelihood for violent contact in parks and public land is high enough that they don't worry about public perception of a tactical entity.

And the number of disenfranchised people moving to public land as their base of operations and contact with LEO's is growing.

Edited to add: A lot of people think if the SHTF they are going to retreat to the "Great American Redoubt" . The truth is for the most of us, we have resources to withstand a few years of economic downturn before we have to "retreat". I'd venture to say there is a larger population than we think that are already on the ropes financially, and they will be the ones to load up the Walter White RV and set up camp in the National Forest, ala "Alaska Bush People"

 

[JEL]

When it comes to the public lands experience and stewardship of our public lands, we more than often talk about forest/range health – the projects going on out there, the conifer encroachment, the fuels reductions. We’ll discuss road densities, travel plans, trails, etc. Often times, it is those features that physically exist (or don’t exist) on the landscape that we think drives our experiences out there. As a member of a county committee, as a local working group member, as first responder, and as citizen, a theme I have noticed over the last decade, and one I feel is actually reaching the point of a critical issue, is lack of law enforcement on public lands. It affects landowners adjacent , the public land user/lessee, and the resource . Tons of examples exist and I won’t expound on all I can think of.

The Law Enforcement Officers I have interacted with on public lands are doing mostly sacred work, so this isn’t me complaining about them. It is a concern that certain expenses of public lands are woefully under-patrolled. I have experienced a few camping trips with my family over the last few years where a bad actor or group of bad actors in our proximity gave a sense of lawlessness to the experience – an uncomfortableness. I see folks camped wayyyy more than their 2 week allotment (and have notified the authorities), I see frequent drug use, and I see folks ripping the country up with a seeming impunity.

I don’t know the exact stats, but when I think of the Forest I play in most – the Beaverhead-Deerlodge – there are something like 3 USFS LEOs covering over 3 million acres. They've basically each got their own Rhode Island, and don't work 24/7. Now, counties may have MOUs in place to patrol certain campgrounds at certain intervals, and MT FWP LEOs and even MHP might come to the aid of a situation if they can, but generally, there is a lack of enforcement presence and a damn-long response time if one is needed. Whether it is camping in one spot too long, drug use, violence, or just general lack of rule-following (closed roads, trails, shooting, trash, etc) – I believe as our public land use continues to drastically rise, the experience of users will diminish more than it has to if we don't get ahead of this.

Specifically, and why I write this post - 5 years ago, our local sheriff told a group I am a member of that he would never take his family camping at a local high mountain lake campground. It’s become a hotspot for certain denizens, the incident response time up there is closer to an hour than anything, and that that situation wasn’t going to change anytime soon. A member of the USFS said it was too dangerous for a campground host. Just a week ago, 5 years later, I heard the same thing from our new sheriff.

That there be beautiful and precious chunks of public land out there, and that they could be deemed unsafe or inappropriate places for families, is a failure I do not believe we should accept.

There are a couple current openings for LEO positions in this neck of the woods, but even if they were filled, there should be more positions. From what I have heard, I really don’t think it looks like more positions are on the horizon, but I feel like there should be, and for what it is worth, I will likely write my congressman. The USFS spends a fair bit of funds in other places, and I think prioritizing this is important, and I specifically mean incentivizing folks via higher pay and creating more FTEs.

I am curious – in your neck of the woods, do you feel like the amount of law enforcement on public lands is sufficient? Yes, or No, I'd be interested in where you see it working or don't, and why you think that is.

View attachment 277190

Not near enough law enforcement anywhere from what I can tell. Game Wardens and Rangers in MT are especially understaffed, underpaid and overworked. And yep, there are several places we used to camp around Helena 20 years ago that I won't go to now.

 

[rtraverdavis]

There are areas of federal public land in Oregon that have become permanent shanty towns of homeless camps. Any natural beauty or semblance of cleanliness is absolutely decimated. These places are become dens of drug use and really sad, scary living. Local law enforcement has their hands tied in terms of moving the camp inhabitants out, and it is unreasonable for the one or two federal LEOs assigned to a given jurisdiction covering millions of acres with dozens of these camps to make their stand there.

We desperately need more federal LEOs.

 

[Dakota79]

The county I live in is 1.74 million acres and we have no resident game warden and 1 Sheriff. Every now and then you will see a HP but not often. Pretty rural and pretty quiet.

 

[Hunting Wife]

I was amazed at the Kit carried by Washington State park personnel. The one I met last weekend looked like she was about to do a raid on a drug house

What you expect:

What they are wearing in the field:

Which tells me that the likelihood for violent contact in parks and public land is high enough that they don't worry about public perception of a tactical entity.

And the number of disenfranchised people moving to public land as their base of operations and contact with LEO's is growing.

When I was in college, we had a couple of wildlife agency LEOs come present to us, presumably in an attempt to recruit from our class. They acknowledged that wildlife rangers/officers had a relatively higher risk of being killed in the line of duty simply due to the fact that they primarily work remotely, alone, out of communication range, a long time from backup, and virtually every contact they make is armed. Not sure how much has changed in the 20 years since then.

To answer the original question simply, hell no. Like I won’t even bother to call our LEO because he’s 3 hours away. What’s the point? I can try the State guys, but they are still an hour out. Nothing is getting enforced, really. I can write down a plate and try to get pics if I can do it without escalating the situation, but we’re not equipped nor trained for making contacts.

It puts us regular old Wildlife folks in the precarious situation of encountering people violating laws while we’re wearing a uniform, but having absolutely no ability to do anything about it. Unfortunately, the patch on our uniform makes everyone think we are law enforcement. I feel like some day, shit’s going to go sideways when someone out working on something innocuous runs into the wrong individual on the wrong day.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

When I was in college, we had a couple of wildlife agency LEOs come present to us, presumably in an attempt to recruit from our class. They acknowledged that wildlife rangers/officers had a relatively higher risk of being killed in the line of duty simply due to the fact that they primarily work remotely, alone, out of communication range, a long time from backup, and virtually every contact they make is armed. Not sure how much has changed in the 20 years since then.

To answer the original question simply, hell no. Like I won’t even bother to call our LEO because he’s 3 hours away. What’s the point? I can try the State guys, but they are still an hour out. Nothing is getting enforced, really. I can write down a plate and try to get pics if I can do it without escalating the situation, but we’re not equipped nor trained for making contacts.

It puts us regular old Wildlife folks in the precarious situation of encountering people violating laws while we’re wearing a uniform, but having absolutely no ability to do anything about it. Unfortunately, the patch on our uniform makes everyone think we are law enforcement. I feel like some day, shit’s going to go sideways when someone out working on something innocuous runs into the wrong individual on the wrong day.

I’ve never once seen a federal LEO, don’t see too many fish and game either .

A couple years before I worked their a CGS employee was murdered in the field by some psycho… kinda a hair raising story.

Are non-LEOs allowed to conceal carry on duty with personal weapons for self defense?

 

[Hunting Wife]

Are non-LEOs allowed to conceal carry on duty with personal weapons for self defense?

Absolutely not. You would be fired for that. Too much liability.

 

[Treeshark]

I see the same two guys out on state ground a few times a year duck hunting. I know them, they know me and they don’t even check me anymore (I do have a conservation patron sticker on my car, which is basically every license here in WI). They do ask to see my ducks, which they should- it’s their job and I also think they just like seeing them and just shooting the breeze about hunting for a few mins. I always try to load them on top of my decoys in my pack so I don’t waste their time having to dig if I see them.

I have both of their cards and have called one to let them know approximate location of some after hours shooting. They are both good guys and I’m always happy to see them out doing their job.

 

[Carnage2011]

I’d be all for more game wardens, local LEO’s, and highway patrol. I don’t necessarily care for more USFS LEO’s. I’m sure there are a bunch of good ones but the few I’ve dealt with were dipshits on a power trip. They seem to be the bottom of the barrel of LEO’s from what I’ve seen.

 

[sapperJ24]

Are non-LEOs allowed to conceal carry on duty with personal weapons for self defense?

As far as I know, nope. There might be some employees who have decided that having the ability to protect oneself is worth potentially getting fired over.

The last couple years there's been one LEO for about 3 million acres. And they're busy enough writing tickets within 5 minutes of pavement to travel 2 hours on gravel to access some areas.

The decision to carry for some employees is based on an increase over the last couple years of threats and rhetoric directed to FS employees at remote stations. Includes instances of public brandishing a firearm, repeated threats of assault, verbal confrontations. I could go on...

 

[Scott85]

I was amazed at the Kit carried by Washington State park personnel. The one I met last weekend looked like she was about to do a raid on a drug house

What you expect:

What they are wearing in the field:

Which tells me that the likelihood for violent contact in parks and public land is high enough that they don't worry about public perception of a tactical entity.

And the number of disenfranchised people moving to public land as their base of operations and contact with LEO's is growing.

Edited to add: A lot of people think if the SHTF they are going to retreat to the "Great American Redoubt" . The truth is for the most of us, we have resources to withstand a few years of economic downturn before we have to "retreat". I'd venture to say there is a larger population than we think that are already on the ropes financially, and they will be the ones to load up the Walter White RV and set up camp in the National Forest, ala "Alaska Bush People"

Vest are a lot easier on the back compared to wearing everything on a duty belt and still wearing some type of vest.

 

[Flatbrimmer]

I’ll be in Beaverhead-DeerLodge national Forest this weekend tearing shit up running amok!
I mean,
Not really, we’re all law abiding citizens.

It makes me mad too dude. Gets worse every year. Thankful the gentleman allows us to continue to mine and camp on his leased section… if I had to duke it out with the rest of the crowd for a spot every year, I’d quit going also.

 

[Nameless Range]

I’d be all for more game wardens, local LEO’s, and highway patrol. I don’t necessarily care for more USFS LEO’s. I’m sure there are a bunch of good ones but the few I’ve dealt with were dipshits on a power trip. They seem to be the bottom of the barrel of LEO’s from what I’ve seen.

It's interesting you say that. I don't know if I have ever even met a USFS LEO in the hills, but I have heard quite a few landowners speak highly of the ones around here anyway.

I too really wouldn't care who housed the LEO, I just don't know if County Deputies know and/or have the jurisdiction to enforce camping limit times, off-road BS, etc... Wherever they come from, I think they need to be dedicated to the public land areas and public land infractions.

 

[2rocky]

Vest are a lot easier on the back compared to wearing everything on a duty belt and still wearing some type of vest.

I don't doubt that. It is just that the "Tacti-Cool" appearance gives the impression to folks who are agnostic about law enforcement that the wearer of the vest with 4 extra mags, wraparound shades and a low profile ball cap is that they are looking for a gunfight.
In the metaphor of the old west, it is the equivalent of a fella with a low slung revolver dressed in black vs Marshal Dillon...

Now I know that there are quite a few "Claude Dallas" types out there. There also are a number of veterans of the War on Terror whos introduction to community relations was kicking doors in Fallujah on both sides of the Law....

I realize a badge is equivalent to a Big ol' target for LEO's. But I think community members feel that rather than "Serve and Protect" the Law enforcement is there it "Investigate and Engage Target" . I always feel more at ease talking to a Wyoming Game warden wearing a Stormy Kromer or cowboy hat and a Red shirt.



Versus a California Game Warden:

And please Don't think i'm Anti-LEO. My Childhood friend is the undersheriff for our county, my 1 mile neighbor a Deputy, Another Childhood friend is CA DW warden. As well as a number of acquaintances and friends Active duty and Retired city police forces.