I am writing this to provide more info on the enforcement issue. Right now WDFW is known as a general authority law enforcement agency which basically allows them to enforce all laws of the state from traffic to drugs to wildlife. The only other state agency that is general authority is the state patrol. DNR has 9 law enforcement officers however DNR is a limited authority law enforcement agency, they have the authority to enforce hunting/fishing laws, DNR laws (mainly timber issues), and traffic violations that occur ON DNR lands. Other examples of limited authority agencies are the Liquor Control Board (which has authority to enforce only alcohol and tobacco laws) and State Parks (which has full police powers but only in state parks).

Under this legislation the WDFW would disappear and basically fall under the DNR. However as it is currently written there is no transfer of law enforcement powers to give DNR officers general authority. Which would mean the day this bill becomes law, all former WDFW officers would become DNR officers and basically lose all of the authority they had and would only be able to enforce the laws I wrote above. Now some people have said that WDFW officers should only enforce hunting/fishing laws and not deal with things such as traffic and drugs. However, let’s say you have someone trespassing on your property; a DNR officer/former WDFW officer has no authority over trespass laws because trespassing is not a fish/wildlife statute and thus would be powerless in arresting/citing the trespasser. Let’s say there is people smoking dope or underage drinkers at your favorite WDFW boat launch, a WDFW/DNR officer would not have authority to do anything, they would have to call the local state patrol, city police, or sheriff to come deal with it. What I basically mean is it ties officer’s hands behind their back.

Now what DNR law enforcement currently does is try to gain full authority law enforcement powers by asking each individual county sheriff to commission (commonly known as deputizing) their officers, which basically gives the DNR officer full police authority but only in that county. And the DNR has to do this for each 39 counties in the state. Now some sheriffs are very good about this (Kittitas County for example is great) however other sheriffs (such as King County) have policies that no outside agency can be commissioned. This creates obvious problems with what the public needs and expects of their officers. Another issue is that these commissions are only valid while the sheriff who commissioned the dept is in office. For example the current Sheriff in Kittitas County is Gene Dauna, he does have an agreement with DNR to give their officers full authority in Kittitas County, but let’s say Dauna is fired/retires/or leaves and the next sheriff comes in, that new sheriff can then either continue the agreement or decommission the officers basically taking their powers away. I think right now DNR has agreements with only about half of the states sheriffs to give their officers full police powers in their county. Federal agencies such as BLM and the Forest Service also do this same type of commissioning if they want to enforce state laws, if they aren’t commissioned then they can only enforce federal laws.

If anybody has any other enforcement related ?’s send them my way.