The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission’s Division of Law Enforcement dates back to 1889 with the creation of the Florida Fish Commission. Today, the FWC employs 1,947 full-time employees’ headquarters in Tallahassee, another five regional of fices and 73 field of fices across the state. The FWC territory covers 53,927 square miles of land and 5,983 square miles of water. This encompasses more than 34 million acres of public and private land, including 5.8 million acres of wildlife management area.
The FWC has 73 dispatchers who provide dispatch services to FWC members and federal agents throughout the state. These duty of ficers operate from six Regional Communication Centers where they share facilities with other state law enforcement dispatch personnel, broadcasting on the statewide Harris 800 MHZ digital radio system also shared with other state agencies like the Florida Highway Patrol. These dispatchers, unlike many, have to know the areas in which the FWC officers are working. These areas are not de fined by mile markers or city streets. Instead, they are known by levees, offshore reefs, private lands, waterways and sometimes even by an oak tree. Area knowledge and a unique understanding of how the FWC officers do their job are the keys to the dispatchers’ success. They are among the most diversi fied and elite within their field as they coordinate resources by air, land and sea to both state and federal law enforcement officers.
Calls for Service
The six Regional Communication Centers (RCCs) handle more than 90,000 calls per year consisting of patrol activity, calls for service and officer-initiated incidents, and concerning issues such as boating inspection and license checks, boating accidents, search and rescues, hunting, fishing, marine mammals, nuisance wildlife and protected species. Also, each RCC is designed to assume the workload for other areas of the state during natural or man-made disasters or homeland security events.
The FWC patrols 2,276 miles of tidal shoreline, 1,700 named rivers and 7,700 lakes greater than 10 acres in size. Within those areas, it protects and manages around 575 species of wildlife, 200 native species of freshwater fish and 500 native species of saltwater fish.
The FWC Division of Law Enforcement represents about half of the agency’s personnel with 902 employees, 720 of whom are sworn officers. The division emphasizes compliance with fishing and hunting regulations, state and federal laws that protect threatened and endangered species, laws dealing with commercial trade of wildlife and wildlife products, and boating safety.
The Academy
FWC sworn officers receive training at the Florida Public Safety Institute’s FWC Law Enforcement Training Center. After completing the 20-week Basic Recruit Curriculum academy, those hired by FWC begin an additional eight weeks of special training. This specialized training includes topics like fish and wildlife conservation laws, land navigation and GPS, federal fisheries law enforcement, species ID (marine and wildlife), vessel accident investigation, water safety survival, man-tracking, commercial fishing, vessel operation and ATV training.
At the conclusion of the agency specific training, officers report to their new assignment location and are placed in a 14-week Field Training Officer program. This program is specifically designed to teach the unique requirements of fish and wildlife law enforcement. When the FTO program is successfully completed, officers are given approval to carry out the daily FWC duties.
Mutual Aid
The FWC Division of Law Enforcement partners with other state law enforcement agencies in the Florida Mutual Aid Plan. Of ficers perform reconnaissance, search and rescue, law enforcement services and humanitarian assistance to citizens during natural disasters.
During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the FWC officers were involved with waterborne near-shore patrols looking for any type of oil material and conducting boom inspections and theft prevention. To ensure that all oil was located, the FWC engaged long endurance patrol vessels and fixed-wing air patrols looking for oil far offshore. They also used ATVs, UTVs, helicopters and vehicles to locate material on the shorelines. FWC officers were also responsible for dignitary and biological support patrols. The FWC Regional Com-Centers provided communication support for all state agencies involved in the oil spill response.
Police Powers
FWC officers have full police powers and statewide jurisdiction working and patrolling Florida’s woods and all waters and protecting Florida’s boaters, fish and wildlife resources. They patrol using ATVs, 4x4 vehicles, boats (including airboats and large off-shore vessels), and fixed-wing and helicopter aircraft. FWC of ficers work alone and have complete autonomy to enforce laws, patrol areas, or investigate incidents that are happening in their assigned area.
An FWC officer’s primary duty is to enforce boating, fish and wildlife laws and to investigate serious boating and wildlife crimes. They work with landowners to minimize and resolve problems, and they have hundreds of contacts yearly with the public, including sportsmen, landowners and other citizens, in which they inform and educate about boating, wildlife and conservation law enforcement.
The majority of patrols are single-officer patrols, and activity is self-initiated. Officers have the ability to choose land patrol or water patrol based on current activity (hunting season versus summer time) taking place in their assigned area. Work schedules are flexible, allowing officers to work eight hours out of a 13-hour shift window depending on the enforcement that needs to occur for the day.
Most officers are assigned multiple pieces of equipment including a takehome pickup truck, which is usually a Ford F150/F250; a vessel which, depending on the assigned area, can be from 10 feet to 32 feet; an ATV; and sometimes a swamp buggy. All officers are assigned portable radios along with vehicle/vessel mobile radios.
Specialized Units
The FWC Investigations Unit gives the division the capability of conducting both overt (uniform) and covert (plainclothes) investigations. It allows the FWC to target hardcore commercial violators by conducting long-term undercover investigations. The unit provides direct support to field personnel and has the primary responsibility for the investigation of serious and fatal boating and hunting accidents.
The FWC K-9 Unit includes 15 K-9 teams located throughout the state. The teams are specially trained in tracking and wildlife detection. The K-9s receive no aggression training and are very “user-friendly.” In addition to their law enforcement functions, they have proved to be a great community-oriented policing relations tool. This section is recognized as the premier resource-enforcement K-9 unit in the country.
The FWC also has a tactical component known as the Special Operations Group (SOG). This team is trained similarly to what typical police SWAT teams do, but they also add a specialized ability that is unique to FWC. As most of their deployments are actually in wilderness or waterborne areas, they train specifically for such events. Vessel assaults, urban search-and-rescue support, and tactical wilderness suspect searches are among the many areas of expertise in which the SOG is trained.
Offshore, Aviation and Land Fleets
The FWC Offshore Patrol Unit operates six large “heavy endurance” and “medium endurance” offshore patrol vessels including the 50-foot Orion, the 65-foot Randall, the 45-foot Guardian, the 57-foot Gladding, the 42-foot Seahawk and the 85-foot Gulf Sentry. The patrol vessel “Gulf Sentry” is a new asset to the FWC. It was formerly the “JJ Brown,” and prior to its transformation into and christening as the Gulf Sentry, it was a 1967 United States Air Force vessel that was used to retrieve military missiles and drones in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Aviation Unit plays a vital role in the FWC’s effort to enforce conservation and boating laws, protect rare species and safeguard outdoor users. Pilots operate a fleet of 13 aircraft, six helicopters and seven airplanes, to conduct a wide variety of missions. Aircraft are especially valuable in enforcement efforts related to the illegal taking of wildlife (particularly at night), illegal use of nets, and in the promotion of boating safety.
The Aviation Unit performs many search-and-rescue missions annually, locating lost or overdue individuals outdoors. Pilots provide flights in support of other divisions of the FWC. The unit also cooperates with state, federal and local law enforcement entities, providing flights in support of public safety and homeland security issues.
FWC pilots are highly skilled, often doing the job of both pilot and observer at night, wearing night vision goggles and covering more than 74,000 square miles of Florida’s lands and waters. One has to admire the skill required to operate in complete and total darkness in areas where there is no ambient light or point of reference. In addition to state lands and waters, the FWC has joint law enforcement responsibility with several federal agencies over the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean out 200 nautical miles from Florida’s coastline, or more than 100,000 square miles of blue water.
The Law Enforcement Division’s fleet consists of 750 patrol vehicles, more than 500 vessels (including 80 airboats) and 75 ATVs, which include some utility vehicles. The average life of an FWC patrol vehicle is short lived because of the damage caused by salt water corrosion, severe off-road patrol, and heavy-duty use pulling large boats and other equipment.
FWC equipment is supported by nine full-time mechanics who work from a central maintenance facility as well as seven roving mechanics with fully equipped mobile repair vehicles. They tackle everything from preventive maintenance to swapping out twin 250-hp outboard motors on a regular basis. There are also 13 radio technicians who work beside the mechanics on installs and are specially trained to diagnose and repair the mobile radios and other law enforcement emergency equipment.
Marine Application Laptops
In 2003, the FWC purchased its first laptops for about 100 investigators throughout the state. In 2008, it received legislative approval to purchase computers for some of the 720 officers within the agency. By purchasing semi-rugged clamshell laptops and doing all of the installs themselves, they were able to buy enough computers for most of the division.
In 2009, the FWC received authority from the legislature to purchase 250 fully rugged computers for the front-line boat officers. Once again, they maximized the purchase by working with mobile computing mount vendors to develop the world’s first water-resistant computer docking station and the first patrol boat with the computer integrated into the vessel.
The GETAC V100 laptops were purchased with a 320GB HDD and 4GB RAM to ensure that the GIS mapping and other applications would operate properly. Because these computers are used in the marine environment so close to salt water exposure, a fully sealed, rubber, back-lit keyboard was mandatory. Also, working in mostly sunny conditions requires a bright screen of 1200 nits with the ability to dim to 1.7 nits for stealth operations at night. Other features include an embedded fingerprint scanning module, internal GPS module, WiFi/Bluetooth and an SD memory card slot.
Regarding wireless connectivity, the FWC must have the ability to stay connected throughout the entire state, and each wireless carrier has areas of good coverage and areas of poor coverage. To ensure its officers always stay connected without creating user intervention troubleshooting, the FWC computers use an internal mobile broadband module called Gobi 2000 which allows users to seamlessly switch between Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.
The key law enforcement applications supported and in use on the GETAC V100 laptops include the proprietary fingerprint software that works in conjunction with the embedded fingerprint scanner, Microsoft Office Suite as well as Microsoft Mappoint 2009, Google Earth and the standard police applications on the FWC network (FCIC/NCIC/DAVID).
SmartMCT and Mobile Forms are software programs developed by CTS America that allow users to have access to CAD information, query both the NCIC and FCIC databases for hit responses, utilize the AVL (Automatic Vehicle Locator) functionality for mapping and logistics within their region, and write and issue warnings and citations for violations.
Waterproof Docking
Field Services staff worked closely with Precision Mounting Technologies (PMT) to develop this state-of-the-art computing system. FWC staff is now installing the waterproof docks into approximately 275 FWC patrol boats. They have also retrofitted the trucks to accommodate the fully rugged GETAC computers. The FWC technicians continue to test, evaluate and create new technology, including Internet streaming video cameras to project events back to FWC and the State Emergency Operations Center from the field.
The goal of the docking design was to develop a secure and functional mounting system able to withstand the rigors of salt water exposure and yet be fully user-friendly. PMT’s unique design achieved this by taking advantage of special vessel console recesses. The slideout docking station is fully powered, fully removable and fully protected, yet is able to be secured and hidden from view when the vessel is unattended.
Thus far, PMT has provided custom mounting solutions for 22 vessels, including seven brand new Boston Whalers that have the mount built inside of the vessel’s console. The Boston Whaler laptop integration is the first of its kind with any patrol boat.
Working together with other state agencies, FWC officers are dedicated to their craft, as many are born and raised in the area they now patrol. This dedication is no more apparent than when talking to officers who have left FWC and are asking to return because they miss the equipment, type of work and freedom to make a difference in their community.
