State Park Rangers in Harm’s Way

Dana Jones was in her second month on the job as superintendent of Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area near Tracy, Calif., when she discovered a methamphetamine lab operating in an abandoned mine.

It was to be her introduction to the realities of life at a California state park. When she wasn’t being shot at or threatened, she was arresting drunk drivers and trying to settle domestic disputes in campgrounds.

It’s a familiar story throughout the nation’s largest state park system. Even as park employees reacted with horror at the news earlier this month that a ranger in the Santa Cruz Mountains had become California’s first park ranger to be shot on the job, few were surprised.

“It’s a sign of the times,” said Jones, who is the incoming president of the California State Park Rangers Assn.

Rangers have watched as urban ills have spilled into the state’s once tranquil parks and beaches.

This month’s incident at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park may have been the first in which a ranger was shot, but rangers are routinely shot at, beaten, run over and threatened.

With the parks drawing increasing numbers of visitors, arrests have increased more than 100% in three years, officials said.

Nationally, attacks and threats against National Park Service personnel increased by 940% in 2001 from the previous year, and violent incidents involving Forest Service employees increased 136%, according to statistics compiled by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., that advocates on behalf of park rangers and other employees of the Department of the Interior.

The shooting near Santa Cruz occurred Dec. 10 as the ranger, Sharon Galligan, attempted to cite a man for illegal camping. Authorities say the man emerged from a car and shot Galligan, who also fired her gun. Galligan, a 16-year veteran, was wounded in the knee.

The suspect, David Melberg, was arrested Dec. 11 in San Jose and has pleaded not guilty. Galligan is recovering at her Santa Cruz home.

Word of the incident reverberated through the close-knit ranger community, where, Jones said, “Everyone knows everyone.”

“It’s like a big family,” said Jones, who has worked with Galligan. “It hits close to home.”

All California park rangers are trained as peace officers and qualified to carry guns.

Even so, Jones said, rangers are expressing concern that the job they hoped would take them into the serenity of nature has put some in harm’s way.

Roy Stearns, a state parks department spokesman, said the agency is examining the possibility of assigning partners to rangers who patrol remote areas alone. He said that, in those areas, it can take more than an hour for backup help from other rangers or law enforcement to arrive.

“But, like most things, that will require more money, which we certainly don’t have,” Stearns said.

To some, conflict seems inevitable at cramped state parks that altogether host 85 million visitors a year. Rangers and others say societal ills are migrating to public lands.

They point to an incident at San Onofre State Beach three years ago in which a man hijacked a taxi and drove it into the park. He was shot and killed by rangers.

In a fatal encounter last year, a man at Morro Strand State Beach killed another man and his 11-year-old nephew after a squabble over a parking spot.

“We see the same type of offenses you see in society at large,” said Jim Fitzpatrick, the state parks superintendent for emergency services.

Fitzpatrick, a 20-year veteran, said he was a park ranger less than a month before he was spit on and kicked while arresting a drunk driver.

It’s not just the parks. Authorities responsible for public lands report increased conflict.

Nearly half the angry encounters with Bureau of Land Management employees last year were violent, according to the report by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

One of the most contentious slices of public lands in the nation is the Imperial Dunes, managed by the Bureau of Land Management. During recent holiday weekends, tens of thousands of off-road-vehicle enthusiasts swarmed across the vast sand dunes in the southeast corner of the state. Last year’s rowdy gathering left two people dead and more than 200 injured and led to numerous arrests.

“I’ve heard it described as ‘Mad Max on meth,’ ” said Eric Wingerter, national field director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. He was among a group of observers at the dunes last year.

“The rangers were getting roughed up and there was no backup,” he said. “People were throwing bottles.... It was ugly.”

Patrolling can be especially risky in the Southwest, where border crossings by illegal immigrants and drug runners have led to fatal encounters with park rangers. Rangers have begun wearing body armor and carrying automatic weapons.

Last year, a ranger at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was killed while helping Border Patrol agents track fugitives from Mexico. He was the third National Park Service ranger killed on the job in four years. For the second year in a row, a park rangers’ organization has named Organ Pipe the nation’s most dangerous national park.

In the remote and vast state and national forests, where rangers are spread thin, lawlessness often goes unchecked. The forests’ isolation is its own lure. Some areas become refuges for criminals.

“Lytle Creek is known as a place where people go up in the canyons and dump bodies,” said Kathy Johnson, a ranger at the Lytle Creek station in the San Bernardino National Forest, 50 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

“We’re close to Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga. People can get on the freeway and drive up into the deep canyons and do pretty much anything. It’s still a remote place.”

Johnson, who has worked in the forest for 12 years, said her job has gotten more dangerous in the last 10 years.

“You have to think twice about going some places by yourself,” she said. “I try to stay in constant radio contact. You don’t take anything for granted.”

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Guns Fired Only Five Other Times

California Department of Parks and Recreation officials say that, until this month’s exchange of gunfire, park rangers had fired their weapons only on the following occasions:

* Nov. 30, 1989, at Lake Perris State Recreation Area. A man appeared to point a gun at a ranger, who shot and killed him.

* Aug. 14, 1990, at Huntington State Beach. A driver entered the park on the wrong side of the road. A lifeguard tried to stop the driver, who emerged from his vehicle firing a gun. The lifeguard shot and killed the man.

* Dec. 25, 1999, at San Onofre State Beach. A man armed with a knife hijacked a taxi and rammed into the side of the park entrance station. He got out of the taxi waving the knife and ran toward park rangers, who shot and killed him.

* Nov. 2, 2000, near Anza-Borrego State Park. A park ranger joined California Highway Patrol officers in pursuit of a suspected bank robber, who was shot and killed.

* July 8, 2001, at Morro Strand State Beach. A dispute over a parking place led to the fatal shooting of two campers. The suspect was shot by a park ranger.