Should All Game Wardens Wear Body Cams? Washington State Thinks So

Starting in September, wildlife officers in Washington state will be required to wear body cameras while on duty. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the new program On Monday, he said the agency’s introduction of body cameras is intended to increase accountability, enhance transparency and improve public safety.

“It’s really meant to provide an unbiased account of what happened,” said Steve Bear, WDFW’s chief of law enforcement. Outdoor living“Gamekeepers often work alone in places where there are no witnesses, and that provides clarity in the situation.”

While the program may be new to WDFW, it’s far from the first of its kind. Several state fish and game agencies already require or allow their game wardens to wear body cameras. It’s part of a larger trend among law enforcement agencies across the country. A Report 2022 Research from the National Institute for Justice found that about half (47 percent) of all police departments and most large police departments (80 percent) in the U.S. are now required to use these devices.

Bear says WDFW’s new body camera program is part of a larger legal mandate that affects all law enforcement officers in the state — not just game wardens — and in many cases requires them to record their interactions with the public. But he says that even before the new law was passed, WDFW game wardens were asking for body cameras.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the general sense that a lot of people don’t trust law enforcement. And they want people to see what they’re actually doing.”

Bear says that under the new program, which begins Sept. 1, all 152 of the state’s wildlife officers will be required to record every interaction they have with a member of the public, such as during a wildlife check. They can do this by simply pressing a button on the camera. Bear says the cameras will also automatically start recording when an officer draws their Taser or gun.

“We have the cameras here in the office and they’re doing training over the next few days,” Bear said. “We should be ready to deploy them next week.”

Game wardens need body cameras as much, if not more, than the average police officer, Bear said. In addition to spending more time in remote areas with few witnesses, game wardens regularly come into contact with people carrying firearms and can often find themselves in dangerous situations. He said obtaining video footage will also strengthen the evidence they can use to support investigations and protect Washingtonians’ shared natural resources.

“We’re here to serve the public. We want to be open about what we do,” Bear says. “And I think this is just another way to do that.”

There are some hunters and anglers who are already seeing this philosophy in practice. Officers with the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission have been using body cameras in one form or another for about a decade. A 2014 law gave full-time game wardens and waterways conservation officers in Pennsylvania the authority to use body cameras, and a new bill introduced in June wants to extend that authority to deputies as well. Importantly, these laws do not impose mandates, but rather allow agencies to use body cameras as they see fit.

“It is a neutral, objective witness to the events [that happen]. What statements were made, what actions were taken,” PGC Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Raup said in a recent interviewexplaining that the benefits of bodycams go both ways. He said the use of cameras has enabled PGC to “eliminate and reduce” the number of false complaints from the public.

Read more: Tennessee judges rein in game wardens, declare warrantless searches on private property unconstitutional

In the past 10 years, at least nine state fish and game agencies have implemented their own body camera programs. This time frame also matches the aforementioned adoption of body cameras by law enforcement agencies across the U.S. While some agencies were already experimenting with the technology, the New York Police Department became one of the first major departments to adopt body cameras in 2013, according to the Associated PressThis was partly caused by a federal judge’s decision that the The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy was unconstitutionalMany more police departments would follow suit in 2014 after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked a wave of public protests.

For example, game wardens in Georgia have been wearing body cameras since 2020. Oklahoma and Arkansas followed in 2022, the same year the U.S. Department of the Interior began requiring body cameras. Employees of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to wear body cameras. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency began equipping game wardens with bodycams Earlier this year, unlike in Washington, the TWRA program was driven entirely by the agency itself, rather than by a statutory mandate.

Read more: Texas game wardens seize $100,000 worth of stolen boats and motors during amateur bass tournament

This is by no means an exhaustive list, either. Bear says neighboring agencies to the south and north — the Oregon State Police and the Alaska Wildlife Troopers, respectively — already use body cameras. And other state fish and game agencies will likely implement their own programs as body cameras become more commonplace in local police departments.