Green Jersey

New Jersey drops unpaid deputy conservation officers

The state has dropped its team of unpaid volunteer deputy conservation officers, according to a Saturday Star-Ledger story.

The problem: They’re too expensive.

The state had 29 deputies last month, conservationists who worked alongside full-time, paid officers, down from more than 100 in the early ’90s.

But a 15-member panel of training officers, former officers, lawyers and others determined that while the state spends $30,000 annually recruiting and training deputies, it would have to spend a lot more over the next five years to shield them and the state from potential lawsuits — just under $1 million, according to Tim Cussens with the state Division of Fish and Wildlife.

The liability concerns came to a head, authorities said in the Star-Ledger story, after the fatal shooting, in 2006, of a member of the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation by a state park police officer.

From the Star-Ledger:

For now, New Jersey’s 55 full-time conservation officers will patrol alone, and that’s already posing complications. Bureau operating procedures, for instance, require that two officers be assigned to some tasks, such as night patrols. Deputies often helped fill out those two-man teams.

“Now, they’re going to have to pay two full-time officers to patrol together,” said Harley Simons, 51, a Pemberton resident who worked as a deputy for 17 years. “I don’t know how they’ll do it without deputies.”