Sonoma County strips park rangers of peace officer status

Sonoma County supervisors have controversially reclassified regional park rangers away from peace officer status, to the less law enforcement focused public officer status.

It's a move widely condemned by park rangers like Kat Pringle.

"I don't know that there's much else to be done," Pringle said outside the Board of Supervisors chambers in Santa Rosa after the decision. "As far as I understand it, the director does have this kind of power."

County supervisors, minus the absent James Gore, unanimously approved the reclassification.

For Sonoma County Regional Parks leadership, it’s a simple change; one which Deputy Director Melanie Parker said puts the park ranger role more in line with the department's vision.

"We are really not trying to strip them of their professionalism," Parker said. "They are professional park rangers. We're just truing up the job with no change to their pay or pension or anything of that nature."

The public officer role requires different training, and Parker noted Santa Rosa Junior College has discontinued its ranger training program, forcing interested trainees to look outside the area.

She said the change in status is about emphasizing the stewardship and park oversight aspect of park rangers’ work.

"Rangers don't routinely arrest people," Parker said. "They never have in the history of Sonoma County Regional Parks and yet they have handcuffs and some training, but not all of the tools to do so. It was really needed to clarify and get ourselves out of a quasi sort of law enforcement job and into right straight up park ranger, not park police."

But the park rangers’ labor representative said besides the concern over the loss of law enforcement ability, there's major concern over the loss of medical emergency response privileges.

Damien Evans is with SCLEA, the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Association, which represents the park rangers.

"For right now, the park rangers have red and blue lights [on their vehicles], they have the ability to go code three to a medical [emergency] at a regional park," Evans said. "They will not be able to do that. So they will be sitting in traffic obeying traffic laws just like everybody else responding to a medical emergency as an EMT, it makes no sense."

Evans said as it is, park rangers make few arrests throughout their career, and he noted that internal Sonoma County Regional Parks policy will prohibit rangers making misdemeanor arrests if they are reclassified.

"Park rangers have been peace officers for over 40 plus years," Evans said. "This is not something that just came out of the air. It's a long time, it's decades of change that this is going to impact and the net positive to the rangers and the community is not there."

But, with county park land expanding; parks leadership, and supervisors like David Rabbitt, feel shifting ranger focus more towards natural resource management and park stewardship, and away from law enforcement, is the correct path.

"I think it's really more getting back and fulfilling the philosophy of our parks, which we've doubled in my tenure here, in terms of acreage," Rabbitt said.

In addition to reclassifying the ranger position, county supervisors also gave the go-ahead to an agreement between Regional Parks and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.

That agreement will dedicate five officers, four deputies and a sergeant, to a regional parks unit which will operate from 1 PM to 11 PM, and be paid for from the Regional Parks' budget to the tune of over one million a year.

Labor representatives for the rangers say they are not opposed to the dedicated sheriff unit, but as Pringle echoes, not as a replacement for rangers.

"I understand their point that, okay, well if we need armed law enforcement, then let's just contract with the sheriff," Pringle said. "That's a stopgap measure."

According to Pringle, a Sonoma County Regional Parks ranger for five years, the agency is down to just ten field rangers for the system’s 57 parks, trails, and access points.

She says law enforcement authority is core to the park ranger role as stewards of public land.

"At some point, you're going to have to address the fact that you need dedicated peace officer authority within the parks who are fully equipped, fully trained, and completely understand the mission of resource protection and public safety, which is different than a deputy's," Pringle said. "It just is."