'People are just getting downright mean,' say NPS rangers

Scott Streater

An advocacy group's sobering report last week that a record number of assaults and threats were recorded last year against National Park Service rangers may have come as a surprise to the general public.

But the numbers did not shock the men and women on the receiving end of that violence.

The leaders of the National Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents law enforcement rangers at NPS sites nationwide, say their members have seen firsthand the change over the past two years.

"It's getting rougher out there," said Randall Kendrick, a trustee with the National Park Rangers Lodge.

Kendrick and other rangers say the ongoing economic recession, combined with a growing anti-government sentiment among some groups, has led to a growing number of park visitors appearing to be "on edge," making for often-tense interactions with rangers.

"From my personal experience, what I'm dealing with in the field each day, people are just getting downright mean," said John Waterman, a law enforcement ranger at Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania.

Park rangers, like this one on horseback near the Santa Elena Canyon at Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas, often work alone and in some very remote locations. Law enforcement rangers say they have noticed an increase in the last year or so in the number of people who are disrespectful and even violent toward them. Photo courtesy of NPS.

Routine situations like traffic stops can quickly turn volatile, said Waterman, who is also president of the National Park Rangers Lodge.

"You pull somebody over for speeding, and they'll start going off on you. They'll spit on you. They'll get out of the car," he said.

"Normally, you're just going to ask them to please comply with all posted speed limits and to have a nice day, but it escalates. This is not rampant, of course, but we're seeing more of these kinds of things."

The numbers in the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility report last week reflect that anger to some degree. Among other things, the group reported that violent incidents against NPS rangers and Forest Service employees in 2009 reached record levels (Land Letter, May 27).

NPS recorded 158 "attacks or threats" against law enforcement rangers last year -- more than four times the 36 incidents documented in 2008, and by far the highest number of incidents in any single year since PEER began tracking the assault data 15 years ago.
The Forest Service, meanwhile, logged a record 427 violent episodes against its employees last year -- a 33 percent increase over 2008, according to the PEER report.

Additionally, while the Bureau of Land Management reported only a slight increase in violent incidents, the PEER report notes agency law enforcement officials complained in surveys that rangers are growing increasingly concerned about assaults from people driving off-highway vehicles (OHVs), calling them a "new major threat on recreational desert lands."

Overall, the violent incidents catalogued by PEER include murders and sexual assaults, highlighting what the advocacy group calls an increasingly dangerous atmosphere in national parks and forests, as park rangers and other law enforcement personnel must oversee hundreds of millions of acres of mostly remote land.

The Park Service has said the assault numbers are serious, but so far no steps have been taken to address the concerns raised by the PEER report.

More rangers needed

Scot McElveen, president of the Association of National Park Rangers, agreed that the assault numbers in the PEER report are troubling and that the atmosphere at some parks is tense.

McElveen said some parks require that only law enforcement personnel -- and not other park employees -- correct people who violate park rules and regulations in an effort to avoid hostile confrontations.

But he is not ready to concede that the assault numbers in the PEER report indicate that park rangers are in mortal danger.

"My personal opinion is that those numbers do not trigger in my mind a significant increase in danger for park employees out there," he said.

But George Durkee, vice president of the National Park Rangers Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police and a ranger at a California park unit, said the agency needs to beef up its law enforcement presence. NPS currently employs roughly 1,200 law enforcement rangers responsible for protecting the nation's 392 park units and the more than 270 million people that visit them each year.

"We're all understaffed," Durkee said. "In these assaults, what you see is you have rangers that are almost always working alone."
Waterman said the National Park Rangers Lodge is trying to help the Park Service figure out how many rangers are needed at each park.

He points to Valley Forge National Historical Park, where only five years ago 16 law enforcement rangers patrolled the urban park 12 miles from Philadelphia. Today, he said, there are only six.

On one day this week, Waterman was the only law enforcement ranger on duty in the 3,600-acre park. "We're less in the field than we used to be, and we're more reactive and not proactive."

He added: "Parks are very safe places to be. But criminals go on vacations, too."

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Source: Land Letter

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