Conservation officers will get new training
Bob Mercer
PIERRE - Starting this summer, conservation officers who work in the field and on the water enforcing South Dakota outdoors laws and regulations will be trained differently.
They will continue to get their state law enforcement certification through the same 12-week course taken by police officers, sheriff's deputies, Highway Patrol troopers and other peace officers.
But they also will participate in a special two-week training program that emphasizes problem solving and critical thinking skills, followed by 15 weeks of field training on the job.
The state Game, Fish and Parks Department has adapted for game wardens the nationally-recognized approach first developed by the Reno, Nevada, police department five years ago.
"It's a brand new system. We're going to be the first in the nation," said Emmett Keyser, an assistant director for the state Wildlife Division, who oversees the conservation officers. "We think it's a work in progress. What we have today might be different in a couple of years."
Keyser said the model is similar to what's been used in the medical profession for many years. He said GFP will also adopt what's known in law enforcement as community-oriented policing, where officers become part of the local culture and look for underlying problems that lead to misconduct and crime.
Two GFP regional supervisors received several weeks of training in Reno last fall. Keyser said the department has been looking for a different approach since 2003.
He said the current law-enforcement training is good overall but has some components that don't come into use very often for conservation officers, such as traffic accident investigations. Prior to 1994, there was no formal training.
Tim Kessler, a Game, Fish and Parks Commission member from Aberdeen, has suggested that South Dakota could become a national training academy for conservation officers and game wardens. "We'll just bring all the states here," he said.
South Dakota trains two to six new conservation officers in a typical year, depending on turnover, according to Keyser. He said officers who already work in the field for GFP will gradually receive the new training too.
"It will be a key part of changing the culture of our agency," Keyser said.