By Keith Whitcomb Jr.
Staff Writer
MONTPELIER, Vt. — With only three of its members being female, Vermont’s game warden service wants to hire more women.
Chief Warden Col. Jason Batchelder said Wednesday he hopes that by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Warden Service adopting the national 30×30 Pledge, attracting more female applications will be much easier, and will improve policing across the country as a whole.
The 30×30 Pledge comes from the 30×30 Initiative (30x30initiative.org), a group of leaders, researchers and professional organizations in the law enforcement sector who want to see more women in law enforcement.
The 30×30 moniker refers to the goal of having 30% of recruit classes be female by 2030.
Batchelder said the Vermont state game wardens are the first state warden agency in the country to take the pledge, having learned of it from the Vermont State Police who adopted it in March.
“We obviously see this as relevancy work,” he said. “We want our constituents to see us as favorably and as acceptingly as possible, and the evidence is beyond obvious and clear that we want our officers to look like the people we’re serving, so traditionally, over the couple hundred years we’ve been in existence, we haven’t done a great job of that, and we wanted to make sure that we do better. So this pledge is one of those steps.”
As of Monday, the warden service had 38 sworn officers. Batchelder said five of those are common positions, none of which are held by women.
“Which is something we need to do better on,” he said.
Of the three female wardens the service currently has, one has 11 years experience, the second has four years, the most recent was hired 2 months ago and is still in the Vermont Police Academy, he said.
Batchelder said he would have to hire 13 female wardens to achieve the 30% the pledge calls for. The turnover rate for Vermont game wardens might keep that from happening by 2030, he said, but the goal here is further reaching.
“We have a tremendous amount of interest from people off the street that want to do this job, but when they flip open the law digest and they see no Black and brown people, they see no females, those are subconscious deterrents for them, and so that’s one of the big steps,” he said.
The symbolism behind the 30×30 pledge is important, said Maureen McGough, co-founder of the initiative, especially for agencies that don’t have much gender parity to show that could attract more female applicants.
She said it’s common knowledge that law enforcement is a male-dominated sector.
“What isn’t commonly understood is that there are so many police departments out there who are willing to prioritize gender parity and do what it takes to get there,” she said. “That’s part of what 30×30 offers agencies is a vehicle to communicate that they’re prioritizing this and be clear they’re taking steps to improve.”
Agencies taking the pledge are supported in their efforts by the initiative, she said.
“The last thing we want to do is get a bunch of people through the door to a department that doesn’t support their success, because we’ll just lose them a few years down the line,” said McGough.
Batchelder agrees with that viewpoint, saying that while he can’t see any bias in the service’s existing policies right now, the fact remains far more males apply to be game wardens than females, and something should be done to address this.
“The next step is to begin a series of seminars that is taught by this group out of (New York University School of Law)… so they’re going to give us best hiring practices, where to show up, who to talk to, the messaging, so we’ve assigned Hope Carey, who is our law enforcement specialist, to that effort, and she is going to keep (Deputy Chief Maj. Justin Stedman) and I apprised of everything going on, so we can adjust accordingly in our hiring practices.”
keith.whitcomb @rutlandherald.com
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