Deputy wardens are not a good idea in the litigious society we have. Simple, straightforward laws with fixed fines (jail time not needed for most fish and game violations) and the probability of license suspensions based on one ticket (serious crimes) or multiple tickets (lesser crimes) would help the officer and the public.

The idea of re-writing the statutes isn't a new one. It has been on the table with the WDFW Enforcement Advisory Group for over 3 years. The following draft report that addresses the license suspension process might be of interest. Similar changes could be made to the penalty sections.

I shepherded two statute re-writes through the Colorado legislature for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The first bill (which took two years to pass) cut the length of Title 33 from 120+ pages to about 60 pages. In my reviews on RCW 77, I'm sure similar cuts could be made.

Statute changes, however, can be dangerous. We saw what happened this past year. The bill title would have to be very tight and by-in by both sides of the aisle would be critical.

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Draft License Suspension Process

Discussions within the Enforcement Advisory Committee (EAC) indicate a strong preference for stricter use of the license suspension process available to the Washington Dept of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) to help remove individuals who commit flagrant and/or continuing violations of WDFW statutes and administrative codes.

The current process seems cumbersome and provides an extended window of opportunity for those who choose to violate fish and game rules. Under the current scenario, with few exceptions, an individual must commit two violations within 10 years before the potential exists to suspend the license privileges. There is no procedure to identify those violations that are particularly egregious compared to those which don’t impact the resource but are more technical in nature.

Most of the EAC were in agreement that a point system, such as is used in Colorado, would be a fairer way to identify the severity of violations and allow more latitude to the WDFW in identifying those individuals who need to be removed from the hunting and fishing arena for a period of time up to a potential lifetime suspension for particularly serious crimes. A concept paper was provided to Chief Bjork in 2005 that discussed the way a point system could be implemented in the WDFW statutes. A copy of the paper is provided below.

In lieu of a point system, another possibility would be to change the way in which violations are utilized for the suspension process. In this scenario, a violator could face a suspension under some different guidelines. One would be that any felony violation would take the person to the suspension process. The second stage would be two misdemeanor violations within a five year period. The third stage would take the person to the suspension process if three or more violations (infractions and/or misdemeanors) were filed in a five year period. This could be 3 infractions or two infractions and a misdemeanor.

Under the Colorado point system, one violation could take a person to the suspension process. In some cases such as a gross overbag of fish or small game, illegal take of two or more big game animals over the limit, trespassing, etc along with felony charges could result in a suspension. Under the scenario of tickets accumulated, which would require violations on different dates, gross violations wouldn’t get a person into the suspension process. If that was desired, the RCW would have to identify numbers of wildlife or seriousness of violations (loaded firearm in a motor vehicle, spot-lighting, etc) that would take the person to the suspension process for a single incident.

We’d be happy to discuss options.