One of the most common complaints a law enforcement officer encounters is the accusation that he or she is “harassing” someone. The definition of harassment is to torment repeatedly, so in the context of law enforcement, this is generally taken to mean that the officer is checking or citing the same person over and over, to the point where he is impeding the person’s ability to make a living or to enjoy his chosen recreational activity.

It has always amused me when this accusation is made against a wildlife agent, and disappointed me when it is taken seriously by supervisors or criminal justice officials. After all, DWF Enforcement has an average of two to three wildlife agents per parish. With each agent working a forty hour week, and factoring in time spent on other duties like court, training, maintenance, public relations, boat accident investigations, and search and rescue, the time available for patrol is very limited.  So, it is ludicrous to think that an enforcement agent has enough patrol hours available to harass any individual.

Another viewpoint is that checking people is what wildlife agents are paid to do, and if a person is a frequent participant in hunting, fishing or boating, then he/she is more likely to be checked, and checked often.  We recently had a complaint filed by an individual who claimed harassment.  He claimed to have hunted ducks fifty afternoons out of a sixty- day season.  He was checked a total of three times.  He was issued citations in all three checks, and felt that he was being harassed.

When we looked into his claim, we discovered that numerous complaints had been made about his illegal hunting and trespassing.  Our conclusion was that he was not being checked enough.  After all, a total of three checks out of fifty hunts is only a six- percent check rate.  That is not very high for someone generating almost daily complaints.  Maybe we should tell our agents in that area that they are not checking him enough, especially when you consider that he was cited all three times.

Manpower and staffing issues probably constitute the single greatest challenge to Enforcement Division administrators, and have done so for many years.  Consider the situation in any given parish.  There are three eight-hour shifts per day, and a total of twenty-one shifts per week.  For safety reasons, agents are usually scheduled to patrol with another agent, especially on boat patrols and night patrols.  If our goal is to have two agents on patrol in each parish at any given time, there must be enough personnel to cover forty-two shifts per week.

However, this does not take into account vacation, sick leave, and duties other than patrol.  If we assume these constitute about 25% of an agent’s time, we must add another ten or so shifts per week, for a total of fifty-two shifts per week.  With each agent working five shifts, we would need more than ten agents per parish to achieve this level of patrol effort.  But at present, most districts (two to four parishes) do not have ten agents, so at current staffing levels, we cannot even achieve the goal of two agents on duty at any given time in a district.

So, we must modify our goals to some degree due to limitations on available manpower.  For instance, say we want to cover most shifts in a district with two agents.  Barring complaints/call-outs, and taking into consideration time of year and seasonal activities, we can identify shifts where the likelihood of violations is much less than at busier times.  And this is exactly what we do - we identify when and where we need patrols, and we schedule the available agents to those times and places for maximum effect.

A major factor in available manpower has been difficulty with attracting and retaining employees.  For many years, the Enforcement Division has struggled with these issues.  In the law enforcement field, many agencies have pay and benefit packages which are superior to that of DWF Enforcement.  We have raised our entry-level standards and improved our cadet training program to justify higher pay, but these actions have disqualified many of the “born on the bayou/in the country” folks who tend to make the best game wardens.

Also, the idea of a low paying law enforcement job, in the outdoors (summer heat/winter cold/rain, etc.) with work required on most weekends and holidays, a fair amount of night work, a variable schedule and frequent call-outs is not attractive to many job applicants.  The current low unemployment rate and good economy mean that there are many other opportunities available for college educated applicants or those with law enforcement experience.

We have tried attending job fairs and career days, running newspaper advertisements and sending out news releases, but we continue to encounter problems attracting qualified applicants.  But an even  worse problem is with retention of employees.

Nothing is more detrimental to our program than losing an employee after he is trained and has a few years of experience.  It takes three to five years of fieldwork for most agents to become sufficiently experienced to be able to handle most situations.  Unfortunately, it is at that very time that we seem to lose some of our best.  Usually, they pursue careers with better pay and benefits, and who can blame them.  But we are always challenged with trying to replace some our  most effective employees.

It is obvious that revenue and budget issues effect our ability to attract and retain employees.  The Department of Civil Service also plays a part, as it must approve all pay or benefit increases.  The DWF’s ongoing revenue problems, and all of the adverse publicity generated by those problems, certainly discourages some people from seeking employment here.

Our success as a department is dependent on many factors, but at the most basic level, it is driven by the number and quality of the agents we put into the field.  While a small number of agents can be effective in catching outlaws, the best situation is to have frequent deterrent patrols supplemented by patrols targeted at specific violators.  We are very fortunate in having a group of dedicated agents who put in long, hard hours to protect our natural resources, but in order to remain successful, we must find ways to get some more good ones to work here, and to keep the ones we already have.

If you or someone you know would like to learn more about a job as a wildlife enforcement agent, contact the Louisiana Department of Civil Service or your local Enforcement Division office.

Check out our DWF web page at www.wlf.state.la.us