The National Park Service wants more women in law enforcement positions/NPS file
The National Park Service has announced a seven-year initiative to focus efforts on hiring more women in law enforcement positions across the country. The Park Service will be joining hundreds of law enforcement agencies in committing to increasing female representation in its law enforcement workforce by signing onto the 30x30 pledge, an initiative to advance the representation and experiences of women in police agencies across the United States.
Last week, the Department of the Interior released a report from the Law Enforcement Task Force recommending improvements to bureau law enforcement organizations. In the report, the Task Force recommends agencies implement programs and initiatives to recruit and retain a diverse workforce. Women currently only represent 16 percent of the entire Park Service law enforcement workforce. With this pledge, the agency is committing to almost doubling the number of female law enforcement officers.
“Protecting the nation’s most precious resources, history and communities is a large undertaking that requires a skilled and diverse workforce,” said Park Service Director Chuck Sams. “The most skilled workforce is one that has people from all walks of life, with different skills and different ideas. It is essential that we continue to grow a team that reflects the nation and communities we serve.”
NPS has made strides to increase diversity in its law enforcement ranks. In 2021, the NPS piloted a hiring program for the law enforcement park ranger workforce designed to reduce barriers to entry, increase applicant diversity, and address key staffing concerns at parks throughout the agency. After two successful years of centralized hiring, the Park Service is adapting its recruitment practices to permanently implement the strategy. These changes have already increased the diversity of the applicant pool and have resulted in increased diversity in the Park Service recruit classes, a press release said.
Of the 100 law enforcement rangers hired in fiscal year 2023, approximately 20 percent were female and 25 percent were non-white. While there is still significant work to do, this represents a positive trend toward meeting Park Service objectives, the agency said.
“I am excited about the opportunity to join our police colleagues across the country in committing to bring more women into policing. In my 32-year career with the National Park Service, I have worked with, hired and support many dedicated, skilled and professional female officers. However, we have not effectively increased female representation in this work force,” said Jennifer Flynn, NPS associate director of visitor and resource protection, which includes overseeing the NPS’s three law enforcement programs. “This commitment to actively create a culture to support the success of diverse officers coupled with the organizational changes we are implementing to reduce barriers to employment will provide the framework to change that. I am incredibly proud of our current workforce and welcome more women into NPS law enforcement.”
Comments
This effort is bound to fail because women don't care about NPS initiatives--they care about making life and career decisions that are best for themselves. This is true for ALL people. People are what we can human--and they make their own decisions because they have free will. Let's RESPECT that, and stop trying to fill our narrow-minded perceptions of what ought to be for them.
Let's stop trying to artificially recruit whatevers, or to get more whatevers to visit our parks, and use these limited resources to FOCUS on improving NPS law enforcement... period.
ENOUGH of this failed social engineering !
Wow - A Johnson. It's only social engineering if someone else does it, eh?
I'm a guy, if that matters to any one. I came of age in the late 1960's, everything then from my first driver's license, to enlisting in the military, and on to years spent as a firefighter. a medic then nurse, and later with the NPS. All of those years and paths alongside both men and women in every role. I'm even more sensitized to genders/roles having been a single parent of a child from age 6 months to adulthood. In every situation I've run into troglodytes who naysay female brawn. In every situation my efforts -which I have to admit, physically are average at best, have stood beside the efforts of both more and less qualified men and more and less qualified women. When I was an EMT with an unruly drunk, or a psych nurse with an out of control psychotic patient, I didn't care about the genitalia of the backup that came when I called for it.
Many of the National Park Service's best rangers are women, and the NPS is to be commended for recognizing that its law enforcement workforce doesn't adequately reflect its customers' demographics. I hope that this initiative is successful, but with the failure of the "No Net Loss" directive, I'm not all that optimistic.
Regarding the Interior Department's Law Enforcement Task Force report, which was released last Friday afternoon. I found the report deeply disappointing. The task force was formed in response to alleged misconduct incidents by the U.S. Park Police; one a well-publicized fatal car stop and the other the overly-aggressive clearing of Lafayette Park, so that Trump could hold a Bible upside down in front of a historic church. However, this extensive report hardly addresses the issue of officer misconduct at all, nor of dysfunctional law enforcement organizational structures. While this document briefly references the 2002 Interior Inspector General (OIG) report "A Disquieting State of Disorder...Recommendations to the Secretary for implementing law enforcement reforms", the many unmet recommendations of that report are not discussed. The Task Force report is to be commended for discussing the effects of staffing shortages on the agencies and their law enforcement officers, but its failure to address needed reform to modernize Interior's law enforcement programs is disheartening.