Supervisors consider stripping rangers of peace office status

A controversial reclassification of local forest rangers will go before the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors this week.

For Sonoma County regional parks leaders, it’s a simple change.

A role that, according to deputy director Melanie Parker, places the role of forest ranger more in line with the vision of the department.

“We’re not really trying to take away their professionalism,” Parker said. “They’re professional rangers. We’re just bringing them back up to speed without changing their pay, their pension or anything like that.”

At the recommendation of Parker and other regional park administrators, Sonoma County supervisors are considering elevating park rangers from peace officers — think police officers and sheriff’s deputies — to public officials.

The role of public officer is less focused on law enforcement and requires different training.

Parker noted that Santa Rosa Junior College has discontinued its ranger training program, forcing interested trainees to search outside the area.

She said the change in status is aimed at emphasizing the park management and monitoring aspect of the rangers’ work.

“Rangers don’t routinely arrest people,” Parker said. “They’ve never done it in the history of Sonoma County Regional Parks and yet they have handcuffs and some training, but not all the tools to do it. There was a real need to clarify things and move away from a law enforcement job to being a full-fledged ranger, not a park police officer.”

But the rangers’ union representative said the more pressing concern is not the loss of law enforcement capacity, but the loss of emergency medical response privileges if the reclassification is approved.

Damien Evans is with SCLEA, the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Association.

“Right now, park rangers have red and blue lights (on their vehicles),” Evans said. “They have the ability to activate code three in a medical emergency in a state park and … if this is approved, they won’t be able to do that. So they’re going to be stuck in traffic obeying the rules of the road like everybody else who responds to a medical emergency as an EMT, it doesn’t make sense.”

Evans said that as it stands, rangers make few arrests during their careers, and he noted that regional parks’ internal policy will prohibit rangers from making misdemeanor arrests if they are reclassified.

“Rangers have been peace officers for over 40 years,” Evans said. “This is not something that just fell out of the sky. This is going to have a long-term impact, decades of change, and the net positive effects for rangers and the community are not there.”

In addition to reclassifying the ranger position, county supervisors are also expected to vote on an agreement between regional parks and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.

The agreement will dedicate five officers, four deputies and a sergeant to a Regional Parks Unit that will operate from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. and will be paid from the regional parks budget.