You know, back in the day, there were no fancy search and rescue, tactical, canine, or any other specialized team or unit or what-not in the Law Enforcement Division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). Game wardens were game wardens.
As such, if there was a flood in your county, YOU were the search and rescue guy. If there was a rash of boat thefts in your county, YOU were the marine theft investigator, and so on.
They got all that stuff now, even heavily armed tactical teams that can respond to emergencies by land or by sea. I remember a magazine cover somewhere that showed one of our guys all garbed up in the latest military-type TPWD uniform with all kinds of tacti-cool guns and night vision and stuff.
The gist of the associated article questioned the justification of the use of such weapons by wardens. Well, for anybody in law enforcement, that was an easy one. You see, the bad guys don’t choose their weapons by what badge is worn.
Could you imagine? I mean, if Little Donnie Drug Runner figures he’s gonna shoot his way out of a backroad drug deal, he’s not gonna sub-in a six shooter for his 9 mm UZI with the 30-shot magazine just because he runs into a warden instead of a DEA guy. Sheesh.
Anyhow, I digress. In 2006, I joined a specialized group; the TPWD Environmental Crimes Unit. When they gave me an unmarked truck and told me I didn’t have to wear a uniform anymore, I figured I had arrived.
My TPWD cool-kid street cred shot way up the moment I gave up wearing the blue badge of a field game warden for the shiny silver star of a sergeant, or so I thought.
There were six of us spread out across the state. South Texas was my area, but I travelled all over the state to help out the other five and/or participate in muti-agency task force investigations.
I got sent on one of those multi-agency deals right off the bat. My boss told me to go to Houston to participate in a search warrant detail for the investigation of a petrochemical company along the Houston Ship channel.
I can’t remember all the agencies that were there, but a lot of letters were represented: EPA, TCEQ, HPD, USFWS, etc.
At the briefing the night before, there were Power-point presentations, notebooks and all kinds of stuff about who would do what where, and when to be there. My job was to enter and secure the administrative office.
The day of the warrant service, we lined up all our vehicles – there were probably 20 – and headed out. The last vehicle in our convoy was a tractor-trailer hauling a backhoe. A backhoe! This was gonna be interesting.
We entered the property all at once. There was no breaking down of doors with weapons drawn or anything like that.
The room I entered had a bunch of regular folks who had no idea about the illegal discharge the company they worked for was engaged in, but they nonetheless had to obey when I asked them to put down their coffee cups and move away from their computers, or else.
Anyway, we spent the whole day searching for, seizing and inventorying evidence. It wasn’t very glamorous. Heck – the backhoe didn’t even make it off the trailer.
I spent nine years in the TPWD ECU but demoted myself back to field game warden before retiring.
All those teams and units are cool, and I’m proud of the way the Law Enforcement Division has evolved into the state-of-theart law enforcement agency it is today, BUT there ain’t nothing as fun or near as nice as wearing the blue badge.
