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Interior Department audit criticizes law enforcement ability
by Michael
Doyle
Fresno Bee - May, 6, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Pistol-packing national park rangers are part of a troubled
law enforcement program whose disarray was exposed by the Sept. 11 attacks,
investigators believe.
Pulling no punches, the U.S. Interior Department's own investigators concluded in a recent audit that "a disquieting state of disorder" undermines the department's myriad law enforcement efforts. That's serious, because the department has the third-largest law enforcement contingent in the federal government.
"The overwhelming majority of law enforcement officials are capable and loyal officers who recognize that their programs are in need of considerable change," the Interior Department's inspector general noted in the audit. "They are simply looking for leadership from the department to assist them in their efforts to professionalize law enforcement within their bureaus."
With 4,400 law enforcement officials nationwide, the Interior Department patrols a big beat. The officers include national park rangers at such places as Yosemite and Kings Canyon, Fish and Wildlife Service rangers at refuges throughout the Central Valley and Bureau of Land Management rangers in the Southern California desert.
Individually, investigators say, the rangers do brave and exemplary work. Far more than conventional police officers, they juggle jobs ranging from arresting the bad guys and protecting resources to chatting-up park visitors.
"The interesting thing about law enforcement in the park service is that it's not exclusively centered on law enforcement," said Bill Tweed, chief naturalist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
Sequoia and Kings
Canyon parks, for instance, employ 25 full-time and 30 seasonal law enforcement
rangers. Last fiscal year, they responded to 13 thefts and 627 "minor"
incidents that ranged from vandalism to public drinking, and took part in
72 search-and-rescue operations. And they reminded countless visitors to keep
their food locked up away from the parks' bears.
Moreover, individual parks and refuges as well as individual Interior Department
agencies treasure their autonomy. Major parks, including Yosemite, Sequoia
and Kings Canyon, essentially handle all of their own law enforcement, while
smaller park service units get coverage from local counties; Madera County
deputy sheriffs, for instance, have jurisdiction in Devils Postpile National
Monument.
Some park officials fear taking away local authority and centralizing it in Washington. But this is precisely where Washington-based auditors and park-based rangers can part paths.
The inspector general's auditors severely criticize the growth of fiefdoms and a bureaucracy where "departmental initiatives have floundered and coordinated law enforcement efforts have been a rarity." They believe reliance on seasonal law enforcement officers at parks such as Yosemite and Kings Canyon may make sense economically, while posing "many other downsides" including lack of consistency.
Unlike most police agencies, the Interior Department lacks a central internal affairs unit that investigates allegations of officer wrongdoing. But in their own 10-month review, inspector general auditors said they heard "innumerable" accounts of questionable goings-on.
"The anecdotes ranged from excessive shooting incidents to the chronic loss of law enforcement equipment," auditors noted. More broadly, auditors cited problems including "a void in leadership," managers who lack law enforcement experience, "chronic frustration," crime statistics that can't always be trusted and officials who are "wholly incapable of accurately accounting" for how much they're spending on law enforcement.
The Sept. 11 attacks magnified the problems involving individual fiefdoms.
Auditors said the Interior Department had a hard time figuring out after the attacks how many officers could help with the investigation, and where those officers were.
And while some agencies quickly volunteered officers to serve as post-Sept. 11 air marshals, the National Park Service only "reluctantly" provided a few names.
"As a result [the park service], the largest law enforcement entity in the department with over 2,700 officers, provided only three officers for this critical national effort," auditors noted.
A crisis near the California-Oregon border further exposed the conflicts. When protesting farmers seemed to threaten the head gates of the Klamath Basin irrigation project, the Bureau of Land Management refused to send officers. The reason: The project was controlled by another Interior Department agency, the Bureau of Reclamation.
In particular, the auditors cite the lack of a single, authoritative voice for law enforcement within the Interior Department. The historic absence of such central leadership has aggravated the "competing priorities, vague authorities and muddled vision" plaguing the department's law enforcement, auditors say.
The Interior Department recognizes the problems, and has spent about $1.5 million in just the past three years for a series of outside evaluations.
"The reports," inspector general auditors complained, "have been largely ignored and do little more than gather dust on a shelf."
This time, though, Interior Secretary Gale Norton has promised to take the criticism seriously. She has established a new panel that is supposed to report back next month with recommendations.
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