ALC-Game & Fish/State Police
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
all right if everybody can take their
seats please uh we will call this meeting to order uh good morning glad to uh call the first meeting of our game and fish state police subcommittee uh for arkansas legislative council i you know i'm appreciative to be able to chair this committee i am also blessed to be able to be the chairman of our sportsman's caucus along with Senator Hickey,
Senator Clark Tucker, Representative Wardlaw, and who else is on the House side? I can't remember. Anyway, but appreciate the role that we get to play in the sportsman's caucus, and we do a lot of work with the Game and Fish, and so I also personally do a lot of work with the Game and Fish just because of the area I represent and very interested and involved in growing outdoor recreation, which grows tourism and supporting healthy hunting seasons and livestock.
I personally am a hunter and love that, love to see more young women and girls get into that as well. So those are kind of some things that are on my future agenda to talk about and discuss, highlighting some of these programs that are happening within the Game and Fish and how we can partner very intentionally with the Game and Fish as a legislative body who represents constituents that we always get phone calls from, um how we can create a good partnership um with the game and fish because we know how much we
care about all of us care about our state so I'm excited about this oversight committee I'm excited to be chairing this with representative Tosh and I know that he has extensive experience in law enforcement and the state police I'll let him tell you about that himself but I'm excited about that portion of it which he's going to really I think delve into as well um on the the state police I'm going to announce this right off the bat um we I am very interested in and when when uh Colonel
Hager is forward I will bring this up but um in light of uh the floods that happened in Texas I know it's on everybody's heart and mind hearts and minds I'm very interested we know that we have experienced that here in the state of Arkansas with the Albert Pike disaster and tragedy that occurred. So, you know, a future meeting, I really want to focus on emergency communication, the lack of cell phone coverage in many areas of the state of Arkansas, and
really work with our federal delegation, with our FCC commissioner, bringing those people in and seeing what we can do to really push the ball forward to make sure that we have good warnings in place. I'm also going to bring in the counties. County government has a big role in that as far as warning signs and warning alerts and how we can better utilize technology, cell phones,
and really make sure that we're covering in cell phone service in the state, particularly as we deal with tragedies, natural disasters, and things like that that wipe out our communications. And so that is going to be a future focus on a future meeting, but one that I think is really critical at this time, and we will try to jump on that quickly as well. And so I just wanted to – those are my comments for the meeting.
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
7:23
Representative Tosh. Thank you Madam Chair and I too am excited about chairing this subcommittee for the Game and Fish and the State Police and also having you as my as co-chair so I think I really look forward to that and as Madam Chair said that I do have an extensive background in law enforcement as many of you know I spent 37 years with Arkansas State Police so you know to be appointed as the uh the chair for the house of this subcommittee was uh meant a lot to me and
my career in law enforcement like i said i retired as a troop commander out of troop b out of newport where i spent the last 18 years of my career running the day-to-day operations of that state police troop so uh i'm excited about this committee glad uh glad to be uh looking forward to the comments from the Game and Fish and the State Police and serving with each and every one of you on this committee. So
with that, Madam Chair, I'll turn it back over to you and get started. Okay. All
right. Thank you. All right. Well, we will go ahead and get started. So we
will start with item C, which is an overview from the Arkansas State Police. If you will come forward. We're glad to have you. And as they're coming forward, I know we may have some commissioners in the audience with both the Game and Fish and the State Police. So if you're a commissioner with us, please stand so we can recognize you. Thank you for being here. If you're a Game and Fish commissioner. Okay, he's not listening.
Well, thank you all for serving. All right, if you'll just state your names for the records, and then we're going to turn it over to you and just help you let us get started. Thank you. Thank
Mike Hager
Unverified
9:15
you, Senator, Representative Tosh. It's still, I have to fight the urge to call him Captain Tosh. What he didn't tell you in that introduction is that not only did he spend 37 years with the state police and as a former troop commander, he was my former troop commander. So I still have a small amount of nervousness every time I talk to the man.
And I feel like I need to apologize because I guarantee he's already noticed that I'm not in uniform today. I'm in my DPS uniform today. reason number one reason number two a lot of times in the summer months if you're not aware uh we we change uniforms in the summer months to a class b which is an open collar short sleeve shirt not a respect for the legislature i just i don't feel comfortable showing up like that we don't have the ability to put on a class state uniform to come in and sit before this body so that's not within our policy so a lot of times if you see me in summer months i'm going to be in a suit and tie and that's the reason why should have started with this my name
is mike hager i'm secretary department of public safety i'm director of state police the gentleman with me i wanted them to come and introduce themselves and i'll give them a second but it's lieutenant colonel jason erin he's one of our deputy directors and lieutenant colonel mike kennedy's the other deputy director and i'll let them speak thank you i'm lieutenant
Speaker 17
10:28
colonel mike kennedy i also grew up in captain tasha's house when he was at four city so i used to coach my little league baseball team oh my goodness i remember finally uh after the games us running to
see if he could get in his car first because the car would always fill up with kids after the game going to get ice cream so and it's funny how those little things play dividends downstream here we sit today cab so um i'm the deputy director over administrative operations i jokingly say jason has the enforcement side so he's got criminal investigations highway troll cacd and i've got everything else so i've got the recruiting hiring training hr fleet the budget side of things that all falls on my side of the house so i'm here basically as a support operation for jason excellent thank you good
Speaker 25
11:10
morning i'm jason aaron i'm a lieutenant colonel a deputy director for
field operations with the state police i've got the highway patrol division the
Speaker 26
11:16
criminal investigation division and the crowns against children division excellent
Mike Hager
Unverified
11:26
so madam chair captain tosh uh the we just want to make yourself available to the committee today we don't have a formal presentation to give you just want to talk very generically and yeah kind of 30 000 foot overview on what we're doing and why um as you know we've uh had a lot of requests um for the governor's office in the legislature since i took this job in january 2023 the reason
why is simple um public safety is our priority period you know it all stops there at the end you know that's that's the the absolute end goal of every decision that we make within the department is public safety for that reason lieutenant colonel kennedy could talk in more detail about this but when the three of us assumed our positions in january 23 we had 480 commission troopers in the state police to put that in perspective in the year 2000 we had 608 so we had 120
i'm doing the math correctly less troopers in arkansas 23 years later than we did in 2000 during that same time period the population of arkansas has grown by a few hundred thousand i used to know that exact number i don't off the top of my head and i apologize The reason that's important for state police and important for you guys and your constituents is That we buy statute and by policy or an assisting agency We had gotten to the point where our numbers were so low that not only could we not perform our primary missions, which are
Highway Patrol and some regulatory authority that or regulatory Directives that we've been given by statute But we also again we perform criminal investigations around the state of arkansas major crimes include homicide robbery rape things like that and the way that i would explain that generically is in about we've kind of sit down and done the math on this but there's about 62 of the 75 counties that are very very dependent on the
state police both in a highway patrol um in a patrol support form i'm just doing just that mission. As Captain Tosh knows, when I was assigned to Troop B, I left Troop A and transferred to Troop B so I could work for Captain Tosh. But in doing that, my job changed considerably. When I was in Highway Patrol in Little Rock, I was assigned to Highway Patrol, and my job was Highway Patrol on the interstates, on the state highways. When you go to a rural troop like Troop B, which is obviously the majority of our state is, then you find that you take on a lot more
responsibilities um you're answering calls for you know domestic disturbances you're going to fight some progress you're doing a lot of different things because a lot of our local sheriff's departments and police departments at no fault of their own they don't have the numbers that they need to accomplish their mission so they lean heavily on the state police to do that also within our rural troops if they do have major crimes they will notify state police and our investigators tend to work the majority of those major crimes in their in their areas so
it's important for us not to put a feather in our hat to say that our agency is growing that has nothing to do with anything honestly when your agency grows you take a lot more heartache and heartburn on with that with that growth and we certainly have but it's our mission it's our policy you know again by statute by policy to be an assisting agency to the citizens of Arkansas and other law enforcement agencies so in order for us to perform that task which we are statutorily responsible we have to have the people to do it and since we've taken on this
role we've increased the highway patrol ranks considerably we've increased our criminal investigations by about 40 the number of personnel that we have we've been able to stand up full-time units and again support of our partners around the state and full-time units that include SWAT We've got a human trafficking council in our human trafficking task force that we've been able to dedicate full-time. We've got an interstate criminal patrol team that now that we have our numbers up, we've been able to designate them full-time. And the reason that matters, again, to you and to your constituents
is just ICP alone or the interstate criminal patrol team, for the third year in a row they've been recognized by Gulf Coast HADA, which covers basically the Southeast Conference. If you can picture that in your mind, the southeastern part of the United States, there's almost 4,000 members in law enforcement that are in that group, over 300 agencies that are in that group. That includes all the state police agencies, a lot of the sheriff's departments, police departments. And for the third year in a row, our interstate criminal patrol team was designated as the team of the year because of the numbers of narcotics and the drugs that were taken off the street.
and one arrest alone a few weeks ago we took a significant amount of cocaine and fentanyl off the street that the way it was cut there was approximately 165 lethal doses or i'm sorry 165,000 lethal doses in that one seizure alone so it matters you know when we get our numbers up when we're able to dedicate the assets that we do for the purpose that we dedicate them for it matters it's absolutely serving the citizens of Arkansas and helping us complete our mission
and with that I would be happy to open it up with you guys any
questions you may have for us thank you and yes congratulations that was such an
exciting announcement that they got team of the year for that so we're super proud about that talk to me just I know what is the interaction between your human trafficking unit with the crimes against children division I know so much of that intersects with the online activities that you're you're finding um so so how do those two divisions collaborate
Speaker 33
17:30
interact our it is a different approach our human trafficking unit
is taking it is kind of a
Speaker 25
17:36
service after the fact approach uh to provide services to these members of the community that are that are injured or victims and they it's a combined effort with crimes against children as far as when they do encounter children that have been I guess introduced or brought into this world of of trafficking whatever that purpose of trafficking is it is a tool that is able to track and to build contacts and to look and see what services have
been provided in the past and maybe what future services can be
provided in the future okay so your human trafficking unit is more on the service end of things and the support end of things for the victims versus investigative and versus investigative, that goes
Speaker 33
18:23
to the, the, a different division. It's both, but it is, I mean, it's, it's primarily focused. It's trying to
Speaker 25
18:30
bring attention to a world that it's, it's a dark and evil world whether it's affecting juveniles or teens or young
men or young women that have kind of been neglected and someone has propositioned to them for a better life basically for some sort of either a material or financial gain and to attract attention to that there is a sale of being able to provide a way out of that lifestyle and while that providing a way out for these victims there's also an investigation that can take place on the backside of it through our CID division to look into it yeah and the reason I'm
very interested in that is because when we started down the journey of legislation as it related to human trafficking and back in 20 gosh I date myself 2011 2013 there was not a lot of information and education with local law enforcement about what this was and you know it was it was a it a problem that existed in a foreign country not in Arkansas and so there was a lot of education that needed to take place and I assumed probably still needs
to take place because it's just shocking that it would be happening here in our state but we know that it is and it has been and we know the FBI has focused a lot on our state because our interstate travel and cross sections and so I'm you know just hopeful that you all still take a leadership role and making sure that our local law enforcement officers whether it's sheriffs at the county level or city level really know what to look for and how to identify that and then you know refer that uh to the to
the authorities that are investigating those rings so i i know there's probably more work to do and i hope that's you know a leadership role y'all continue to do um i'm gonna pitch to um representative ladyman has questions representative ladyman you're recognized thank
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
20:30
you madam chair i'm over here uh i've got a thank you all for being here appreciate you coming to this um i got a question about how y'all work with federal some federal agencies specifically ice and and the question
that i have uh you know we're all aware of what happened down in texas and mcallen and another or a small town down there where people basically attacked ICE and injured officers. And I think some of them were state police officers or Texas Rangers. So my question is, you know, have we had any of those types of instances here? Are you guys putting in extra precautions for your officers? Do you need any resources for that?
And do we have any retention centers here like
Mike Hager
Unverified
21:21
they do in Texas? I'll try to address that as best I can. So when that directive came down from the administration, we were contacted almost immediately and asked to offer assistance and participate in that program. Specifically, it's referred to as the 287G program. in the past and in past administrations 287g was more a program that was taken on by detention
facilities at county sheriff's departments things like that we had about two or three i know craighead county benton county and there may have been one other that i'm i can't think of off the top of my head but it basically gave them the authority to hold suspected illegal immigrants and to make notifications up and it gave them a little bit of training into how to identify them and basically that notification process um and it gave them a little bit more authority to hold where as it is currently we're restricted to a certain extent
they have now um kind of they've started the process to move that 287g program more to an enforcement um street level enforcement so we met with uh the ero um i can't even tell you what that stands for but it's a division under ice we've met with their group supervisor not long after this administration came into place and he asked us to sign on and be a partner with them in this 287g program as we started the process of obtaining that training that would allow us to do
that they kind of put the brakes on and they said we want to revamp it and we are still in that holding pattern right now we haven't seen a finished product so but basically what that's going to do for state police is if we stop someone and they have no identification they have nothing to suggest that they're a legal resident not only of Arkansas but of the United States we're very limited and I think a common misconception is that we have some way to run that person through a system and it will tell us that yes you're either legal or no you're not and the truth of matter is
we do not have that capability there's nothing in a system that is accessible by state police or any other law enforcement personnel through either ACIC or NCIC that will let us know that what that person's status is in the country so when we do this 287g program we complete that training once it's made available our troopers will have a certain amount of authority that we currently do not have if we can take the driver for instance if he doesn't have a valid driver's license
we can certainly cite him but honestly it's going to stop right there because we have no way of pursuing that matter further once we complete that program and that training that's necessary it will give us the authority that if we have probable cause to believe that this person is an illegal immigrant then we can go ahead and transport that person to a facility that will hold them and let those proper notifications be made let that vetting process go through the system and determine if that person is here legally or not and more importantly determine what their
status is here if they're outside of the process that they you know had a an immigration court appearance that they did not make if they're known to be a criminal that is now not only here illegally but they were criminal where they came from they've got resources that we currently do not have but so once we complete that program we will be allowed to use probable cause to detain that person transport them and vet that matter further we just simply don't have that
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
25:06
resource right now all right well uh madam chair got one follow-up on that but um back many many years ago
When Congressman Womack was mayor of Rogers, and I was a mayor in northwest Arkansas, the congressman certified some of his local police officers as ICE, I don't know whether it be ICE agents, but they had certifications similar to what you're talking about maybe. Right. And maybe you're not aware of this, but are you aware of any cities that are doing that? I don't know whether Rogers still does it or not because that's many, many years ago, but are any of the cities doing that? Are you aware of that? yes
Mike Hager
Unverified
25:42
sir i believe they are and we are as well we currently have a task force member assigned to
homeland security that of course is working hand in hand with ice and when we have a task force officer assigned to them they go through their vetting process they complete their training process to be able to enforce federal law specific to that discipline so it is it's not any different from we also have task force officers assigned to dea fbi um ice we you know we have we have uh people that are assigned in that discipline and yes sir to answer your question
we multiple cities and counties also have people that are assigned to those task force thank you yes sir
and as i stated previously i know the a1 system is under you and emergency management um and so that will be a future meeting but i know if you have any comments like just generically that we can kind of pitch for that meeting yeah i think it's really really critical and important to understand your leadership role in that and just making sure that our legislature is aware
of that so um before i uh if you don't mind just kind of briefly giving me that overview so that we can delve into the future we'll set up a future meeting just specifically on this
Mike Hager
Unverified
27:06
issue so excuse me that would fall more under department of emergency management which of course is part of uh dps and to be honest with you that is a that's a work in progress um our chief of staff for department of public safety miss jones shipley is here with us today also um she told me this
morning that she'd been in contact with director gary and they have been instructed to coordinate with parks and tourism specifically and to look at uh basically what we can do more proactively unfortunately in the world that we live in in the arena that we all work under we typically are more reactive after the fact we're reactive and once the disaster happens that's when we we assign resources to come in and try to mitigate that disaster as much as possible. Um, there certainly in light of this,
we, uh, and I don't, I can't even tell you, honestly, we don't know because we're just starting this process. Sure. I don't know who the proper person to be tasked with that would be, or what agency to be tasked. I think it's going to be a collaboration between parks and tourism and the department of emergency management, the weather center, you know, There's so many different people at play and so many entities in play when you kind of start going down that path that obviously we need to do better.
That's, you know, they say if it's predictable, it's preventable. In this case, it's somewhat predictable, even though I've heard this described as a 500-year storm. What we had happen at Albert Pike in 2010, I believe it was, it was an extremely rare occurrence for that to occur. but unfortunately it did occur and there needs to be contingency plans in place and notification is a huge part of that so we're certainly going to look at the capabilities with adam and with the a win system and collaborating with these other agencies and see if there's anything that we can
do better to try to prevent that so i definitely want to partner with you on that collaboration but we also need to bring in the cell phone providers and we need to bring in the private entities as well because we need an all solution we need an all hands-on deck solution driven process and collaboration to get us down the road of where we need to be for these alert systems. And earlier this year, we had a huge flood, a huge storm that just sat on top of an area of the Ozarks
in Searcy County and Stone County that just produced an incredible amount of water and floods that rose very very similar on the south sillimore creek that then entered into the white river it knocked out homes rvs a boat dock we there was no sensors on the south sillimore creek there are sensors on the north sillimore creek so there are water sensors and that is because the federal government has the ozark national forest and so they had sensors on that creek but not on the
south silamore where you know there was a lot of camping a lot going on thank god nobody lost their life but it was very very similar to what we saw um and there were rvs floating down and then you know hit the bridge on the white river and so these are natural disasters that do occur but i would also argue that when you're starting to clear cut and you're starting to um i'll bring up the windmill issue but you clear cut and lay a bunch of concrete on top of a mountaintop that
runoff is is going to be detrimental and so we've got to understand that as a state of Arkansas and understand our terrain and understand what we can do to make sure that people are alerted for things like this and yes we're going to experience these natural disasters but there's also things that are mitigating and aggravating that situation that we also need to look at um for a very very comprehensive conversation about it so it's something i'm very interested in and we'll do
that with a future meeting i thank you and i appreciate those comments and i'll be excited to work with you and this subcommittee will be working on that issue so please involve yourself if you're a member representative wardlaw you're recognized for questions
Chair
Unverified
31:29
thank you madam chair I'm going to change gears a little
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
31:33
bit. So when you opened up, you talked about the number of staff that you had had at the agency and what you have now and that it's a supporting agency. Throughout my career in southeast Arkansas, which I know we get forgotten as being part of Arkansas almost daily.
We are part of Arkansas, by the way. My local sheriffs complain daily about support they need in investigations. And so I'd like for you to kind of walk through what the criteria is if you're asked upon to take over a certain investigation, whether it be a murder investigation, a theft investigation. How does that work and
Mike Hager
Unverified
32:16
and I'll punt to Lieutenant Colonel Aaron and let him get more specific.
But I did not follow up with saying thanks to this legislative body and our governor's office, we've increased that number from 482. As we sit here today, I believe we have 578 sworn troopers. So we are trying to assign those assets as needed. And as you can imagine, unfortunately, we have to assign those based on call load first. And we were so far behind in our population hubs, whether that be Little Rock, Northwest Arkansas, Northeast Arkansas.
that, to your point, some of the more rural areas are just now starting to get some of those assets assigned. As far as the specific process of it, by statute, my understanding is when the state police was formed, the legislature was very intentional on not having a body that would come in and run roughshod, basically, over their sheriff's departments and their police departments. So in order for us to accept a criminal investigation, we have to be requested formally either by the agency of jurisdiction or by the prosecuting attorney.
They can send us a letter, ask us to take an investigation, and then we either will take primary or an assisting role, depending on the way the letter reads and what they're asking of us. So specifically, that's the way we get involved in the investigations. More specifically, if you want that broken down more. I don't think
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
33:47
that's the issue at the current moment. It's a turndown from your agency of not taking them. So I didn't know what that criteria was, whether it was a manpower issue. Obviously, to your testimony, Southeast Arkansas hasn't seen the increase in manpower at the moment.
Why would you guys not assist? I guess is a better way of wording the question. Right.
Mike Hager
Unverified
34:09
Lieutenant Colonel Aaron may be able to answer. I'm
Speaker 70
34:12
sorry, I'm not trying to throw you under the bus, but he actually worked criminal investigations. I did
Speaker 24
34:18
not. I felt it if you didn't. I'll do my
Speaker 25
34:21
best. A lot of factors can come into play, preferably we would like to have that request early on in that investigation. A lot of times that request that gets denied will be one that the crime scene's already been released, it's been disposed of,
maybe months have gone by since that initial crime came in. but our agent should still be available to assist in interviews or to maybe re-examine an investigation that's already taken place. That company does have some of the ADC units in there that does take up manpower on a short-staffed company that's already down there. And so sometimes manpower is part of it, just to be honest with you. But there are variable factors, and again, it may be something that request is made.
Maybe it's made from a sheriff's office investigator to an agent, and an agent makes that call when he probably shouldn't make that call, and maybe a phone call to his sergeant or to that company commander should be made, and maybe more facts put out there on taking that case. But typically and preferably, we
Speaker 72
35:27
are an assisting agency, and we would work that case along with that requester. Madam Chair, I just want
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
35:37
to say for the committee's knowledge, when the colonel first took over,
I asked him to come down and meet with our local sheriffs, and he did that. He brought his whole team, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. He came all the way to the headquarters in Warren and set that meeting up. And it may be time to do that again because I'm getting calls again. but i i can tell you that since you've taken the ham it is a lot better uh you do know we exist um which like i said and i keep repeating it because it's true we do exist um we kind of a lost corner down there but i do appreciate what you've done since you've taken over
Mike Hager
Unverified
36:16
thank you i'm sorry just to add
to that um two glimmers of hope for you out of this last class We assigned several down to the Troop F area, and I think maybe two to the criminal investigation company that covers that area. Our personnel know, and our administrative staff knows, that we have plugged most of our major gaps in our population centers.
We're starting a class in September of approximately 70. We're not going to cut our standard. so our goal is not to start 70 our goal is to start as many qualified people as we can get but we hope that 70 of those 70 um we are currently doing a round of troop uh well troop and company meetings as we speak i think we're having our 10th or 11th today of the 12 that are scheduled and of those meetings um we are letting them know that basically help is on the way of this
new group that's coming in we you're going to see many many more troopers assigned to areas like southeast arkansas and over in the delta and east arkansas we are at that point now where we're able to shift resources as much as possible out to the outlying areas that are not typically have not had the coverage that they should have and we're finally getting to that point now that we're going to be able to make a dent in that i hope i hope you can see a difference very soon thank you yes
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
37:51
let me uh colonel let me add something and representative wardlaw one of
the big changes i've seen under uh with colonel hager i know in years gone by that when a new trooper was hired uh kind of the mindset within the department at that time was to on their first assignment was to assign them at the greatest distance they could from their home area and And obviously what we would see happen or what you'd see happen in the state police would be that the first opportunity they had, whether it's northeast, northwest, wherever part of the state they were from, they would put in a transfer request.
And we constantly had that rotation or, you know, those vacancies occurring in southeast and especially in southeast Arkansas, as Representative Wardlaw mentioned. So what I'm seeing now is that troopers are being assigned. They're being hired from those southeast counties, southwest counties, and their initial assignment is a lot of times now they're home counties. So we're not seeing that turnover of people that are not from there,
that's been assigned there, trying to leave. I know I was in that same boat when I was hired. My first assignment, I was from Jonesboro, and it was at Drew County. uh in Monticello and it was a one-man county there was no vacancies I'm just telling you there was one trooper assigned to that county and that was it and uh so I think that type of thinking has really added to uh to be able to keep troopers in some of these areas that other troopers don't you know want to want to live they want to go back to their home area so
I want to applaud you for that type of thinking I think that's good strategy and representative world hopefully that'll help uh you know hopefully that'll help with the issues that you've experienced down there in uh southeast arkansas i just wanted to add that and thank you one more
Mike Hager
Unverified
39:48
thing to add to that as well um in addition to geographical assignments we've also changed the concept of and i know this one may sting a little bit captain todd because i know your highway patrol through and through but if we have uh an investigator for instance he's from
southeast arkansas and he's a tenured seasoned investigator whether he's you know homicide whatever the case may be if they meet a certain criteria now we will take that person and assign them directly back into criminal investigations because we don't want to miss that opportunity and waste that skill set that that person has so we are we have done that multiple times this class we have multiple people that are attending this next troop score at least they're in the hopper for this class that are criminal investigators that will be assigned right back
and we had one recently that came from a sheriff's department that was a skilled seasoned investigator had a wealth of knowledge and it would be a waste to take that guy make him work highway patrol for two or three years before he was able to be assigned back in that capacity so we took that person he was obviously working at a local agency we took that person he came through our troop school he's now a trooper assigned to criminal investigations we put him right back in the county where he was working out of he's literally in the same office so the only thing that changed
for that department was he's on our payroll now not there so he took his sheriff's department credential off the door he says state police credential on so we're trying our best to be good partners it's something i've been very intentional about we have been very intentional about to repair relationships with our sheriffs with our chiefs and to try to offer those resources back and that's one thing that we are trying to do is um is put resources right back if we can i mean as much as we can and that and that
helps our economic growth and development yeah and i
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
41:40
just want to say in response to that you're exactly right i am highway patrol and i'm not sure i really agree with that of doing that because i i really believe that every state police officer when they go to work for the arkansas state police that they need to be assigned to that highway at least for one year so that they have an understanding of what goes on in in the highway patrol so when they do transfer the criminal investigation division or whatever division they they'll
always have that and i think there's just a certain amount of respect from the other officers within the agency hey that they you know they they served their time in the highway patrol so we can debate that and but you were right yeah and uh you know how i feel about that but i understand where you're going
with that but we can have that discussion at a later date thank you thank you
um before i go to representative hawk we have some breaking news senator johnson do you have an announcement
come on now we all have to celebrate this senator johnson we have some breaking news well
Speaker 78
42:59
now now you aren't so my fourth grandchild was just born cross congratulations grandpa thank you very much and and and i gotta say i had and I've kept quiet, but apparently Representative Tosh was a better trooper
than he was a baseball coach
Speaker 81
43:19
since we were getting these years. Ouch.
Okay, killing your mic. Congratulations, Grandpa. Representative Hawk, you're recognized for a question, then we'll go to Representative Meeks, and then we'll go to Game and Fish. Thank you,
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
43:34
Madam Chair, Colonel Hager. Thank you guys for being here. I literally just got
this text from a constituent, and I guess they're watching online. The growing number of concerns with expired paper tags in this state.
I know we've talked about it, and it seems like it grows more and more every single year. And, in fact, driving to the Capitol today, I wrote this down. April 16, 2024 was the paper tag on the back of that vehicle. So I guess really the question is, what is the process right now for you guys in addressing this? Because it is a growing problem. And is there any assistance that you might need from the legislature or to help counteract this a little bit more?
Mike Hager
Unverified
44:24
Well, I can tell you I would be completely out of my lane to
talk about, you know, what the FNA does. and, you know, how they're issued, the way they're issued, and things like that. I can tell you without hesitation that when our troops receive that, that's also a pet peeve of theirs. And I'll tell you this, typically, it's not going to stop there. The same person that's running that tag that is over a year out of regulation, he's probably going to have more issues.
So when our troops receive those paper tags that are expired, they'll put them on the shoulder. and they'll write that citation and they and again typically it's going to turn into something more than just that expired tag so we see it too it's a pet peeve of mine you guys are familiar with our former chief of staff um the now honorable Hugh Finkelstein circuit court judge but I used to get an earful just about every day he would come into my office and he would say I saw two more today you know that were you know to your point that were expired for however long
when we see them we enforce it and you know we're going to put them on the shoulder because typically that is a uh that's going to be a a target rich traffic stop you know when they see that so we do enforce it as far as the problem host holistically about you know why we have so many of it i don't know that i can offer any assistance on that but i can tell you that
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
45:51
when we see it we do enforce it one follow-up yes um this past session we uh
passed a bill to cut down on fraudulent CDLs you guys and the highway patrol working together to to
counteract that how do you see that working
with the two agencies moving forward to help stop those fraudulent CDLs so
Mike Hager
Unverified
46:11
you know it's probably too soon to tell and I could try to get some data for that and get back with you to let you know if if we've seen any movement on that as you well know the Department of transportation or r-dot highway police is tasked with commercial vehicle enforcement typically they had well they had the ability to just stop that vehicle to perform an inspection
or when they come through their way stations and things like that we do not have that ability for us it has to be a there has to be another violation of law for us to have probable cause to put them on the shoulder and so that's going to be a secondary issue that we're going to deal with So we're not going to see as much of that as our partners at RDOT will see because that's their primary task. Ours is not. It goes back to number of troopers on the road and, you know, what they're paying attention to. And if their bigger issue is passenger vehicles that are, you know, excessively breaking laws, that's where their primary attention is going to be focused.
we do stop commercial vehicles but there has to be a another violation of law before we can do that and obviously we're going to enforce that once we have the ability to do so but and that's probably gonna be something that you'll see more of an impact from our dot than you will from
us thank you thank you okay representative makes
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
47:36
and I'm way over on your far far right thank you thank you gentlemen and thank you for your service to the to the state so I I have two quick questions. First off, on the recruiting aspect of it, it sounds like we may be getting to a good place on that.
And my question is, do you have the opportunity to work with the Department of Defense so that when you have military people that are retiring, that you might have the opportunity to reach out and try to actively recruit them? because I think that would be a very desirable talent set for people coming out of the military to make that transition into becoming state police officers. So I don't know if there's a partnership opportunity there that you could exploit, maybe not the right word, but utilize to maybe help with recruiting
some of these folks coming out of the military into the state police. Or
Speaker 17
48:31
are you already doing it? We're already doing that. We have every troop school class. We have former members of the military, sometimes current members of the military, and the Guard or Reserves who sign up for those troop school classes. Most of you have probably been out to or seen our new training facility out at Camp Robinson. So we're physically, our training academy is located on a military base at Camp Robinson. So all of our instructors are out there all day, every day. They're interacting with the military members in and out every day. We also have a formal recruiting section that spends time out there trying to recruit soldiers from Camp Robinson specifically.
You have soldiers from all over the country rotating in and out of there. So it's a target-rich
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
49:06
environment for recruiting. Excellent, excellent. So my question is slightly shifting gears on what we've talked about so far. Can you talk to me about how we're doing as far as cyber crimes? I don't know how involved the state police is in cyber crimes, but can you kind of talk to me about what role you all have in investigating cyber crimes? How are we doing in that area? Do we have enough resources? Can you kind of talk to us a little bit about that? because, unfortunately, that is becoming a bigger issue as we go into the future.
Mike Hager
Unverified
49:35
So I'm going to punt to Lieutenant Colonel Aaron once again. I can tell you that depending on the type of cybercrime, we have a full-time unit designated that does nothing but Internet crimes against children. And back to Senator Irvin's question earlier, all of those things work. They collaborate together all the way down to our crimes against children. And that's a diagnostic unit, or that hotline, they call it. When they receive those calls, they'll take that information.
They diagnose it accordingly if it's a criminal investigation, if it's a matter for DHS, whatever the case may be, to make that assignment for further investigation. But we do have a full-time unit that is very robust that works Internet crimes against children. Some of the other cyber crimes that you see in the way of scams and things like that, The problems that we have with that, honestly, is just enforcement and our ability to have jurisdiction on where they come from. The majority of those do not come from Arkansas.
Our victims are here, so it gives us a piece of that authority to process it. But more times than not, we have to punt that to our federal partners to follow up, whether that be Homeland Security or FBI. So that's— So like an identity theft issue,
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
50:51
that's probably—you're going to send that to the federal agencies. but what you can do in Arkansas, you do do in Arkansas. Exactly, that's correct.
Speaker 25
50:57
And I don't know if Lieutenant Colonel has anything to add to that. I'll just add that our Internet Crimes Against Children unit, it falls under our Criminal Investigation Division. Sergeant Corwin Battle heads that up.
And it's a statewide task force made up of local agencies, sheriff's offices, and PDs. Probably the biggest, there aren't very many days that don't go by that we have a press release of somebody either being arrested, a search warrant being executed at a residence or at a business, or there's a sentencing taking place as a result of an Internet crime. It's a huge problem, obviously. Probably our biggest problem there, manpower is a problem, but our bigger problem is probably funds for equipment to process
the number of electronic devices that are seized every day. Electronic devices are part of everybody's life. each of us probably has one phone if not two phones an ipad a computer and all that all that evidence is collected off each individual and so each evidence each piece of evidence has got to be processed and there is a time delay that it takes and it's expensive it's expensive technology that's out there and it's even expensive training that has to take place annually and it's that's a battle that we've we face every day i will say well if
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
52:12
there's a funding issue i think you would
find uh strong support in the general assembly to maybe help with that going into the future so thank you thank
Speaker 103
52:24
you madam chair thank you thank you and senator johnson thank you madam chair uh so just to follow up on representative hawk uh so really good you know check all those paper tags and those guys that stay in the left-hand lane so uh yeah so to follow up it does do y'all have any kind of notification system uh you know like
phone notification or anything you know talking about the you know the flooding and natural disasters and stuff uh do y'all have a system like that in place that does you know more you know like if you've got an area that needs to be locked down or something that you can do a text or anything that would translate over into the notification you know possibly with adam or in these situations where the low-lying areas might become flooded have we got a system in place like
Mike Hager
Unverified
53:22
that i think right now the short answer to that is no not what we should have um we have the ability to, I'll give you one example, we had a murderer that was nationwide manhunt that was in place and we located that person in Moralton, Arkansas, this has been about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, and there was such an extreme danger to the community that we were able
to work with adam and work with some different partners and i'm not going to say we bent rules but we we checked some boxes that we had to check that we were able to send out phone alerts to that community to let them know this is the person that we're looking for you need to be cautious southern report anything that you have that's also come up recently with the prison escape and that's going to be one of the things that we're looking at is the ability,
and we are still trying to kind of muddle through that process to find out what authority we have to have to be able to ring that bell and basically work with the cell phone providers to give us the authority to issue out those alerts. Right now we're pretty restricted on what we can, like an AMBER alert, for instance. We've all experienced that where your phone will go off and you receive that AMBER alert. There's a lot of boxes that have to be checked, in order to do that and we're working through that process to see if there's anything that we can do and if there's going to be a cost associated with that you know where we can
find that revenue to try to increase that capability to you know kind of isolate certain areas whether it's a prison escape or in that situation a manhunt you know whatever the case may be or of course in the the situation that we had at Albert Packer they're facing right now in texas to where we can send phone alerts out to make those notifications the weather centers have that you know of course we've also all received those alerts on our phones but as far as within state police and adam it's pretty restricted on what we can and can't do and that's part of the
process of one of the things that we're looking into right now that started with the prison escape and with the notification process there but now it's led to this situation with the natural disaster to you know what can we do to you know take some of those reins off to make that process more efficient to where we can push or push those alerts out on phones because right now we're limited on what we can do so we're trying to kind of muddle through that process and see what we have the ability to do and you know and what we can't do what do we have to achieve to
get that capability so that's something that we're definitely looking
Speaker 103
56:11
at yes sir i know i know you're limited on being able to jam phone signals in prisons and i think that's bullcrap she's my language but uh they shouldn't even be in there unless it's y'all's and they ought to be able to be jammed we need to work with our federal partners on that also and and and zone you know zone those areas wherever we have prisons where you can do those alerts around those prisons
whenever something like that happens, and it's just a matter of public safety. Absolutely. I think our federal partners will help in that and in our delegation and whatever we can do. Thank you, Colonel. Yes, sir. Thank you,
gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, as somebody that lived in Mountain View
in Calico Rock, it's 20 minutes from us, the prison from where I live, so it was very scary in our area. Um, I had my car searched several times, um, and y'all did it there. It was, it was a great
response on the ground. Um, but I, you know, drove right through Moccasin Creek area where they finally recovered him. But, um, but yeah, it's, it's really, really important. But I also think we've got to understand what capabilities we already have as well, because if you have a kid at the school you get alerts and notices all the dadgum time so we need to maximize our efforts and figure out what is what we already have in place and that we can coordinate um with it what
even if it's a school you utilize the technology that exists in these uh counties or schools or cities or whatever it is we need it we need to understand the whole picture uh i think as well so again we'll work on that with a future meeting if you as a member have questions or information just please get it to us and we'll just add it to the list and we'll continue this collaboration in this investigation so now we will go ahead let
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
58:12
me just say this i think we're
We're I don't think we have any more questions, so y'all be free to go after I make this comment. But I just appreciate the job you're doing. I know and you know how much I love the state police and I've watched it over the years. But I will say that over the last year and a half since you three have, especially Colonel Hager and you're two on each one on each side of you, you really led the department in the right direction. I think morale is probably better than I've seen it in a long, long time, and I think that is a—I think that's something that I have to give—I'll give credit to you guys.
You've turned it around, and I applaud you for that. I think—I can't say enough good. I mean that—I know the legislative body has really been supportive of the state police, and y'all know that. We've worked closely together on getting legislation passed to, you know, as far as fleeing and so many other laws. But when it comes to morale, right there, the three of you, that's, you know, I know we can help from here, but it's you guys that make the difference. And I want to tell you, I've noticed that across the state.
And when people get up each day and they enjoy going to work, that says a lot for you three. And I just want to take this opportunity to thank you. I'm not going to tell you that at each one of these meetings, but today I will. But I look forward to having you back before us. And if you all have any things you'd like to discuss with this committee, reach out to me or my co-chair, and we'll put you on the agenda and we'll get those issues addressed. So I look forward to working with you guys, and thanks for what you do. Thank you.
All right, thank you again for being here. I echo his comments. I think you are a good coach.
not just about baseball it's coaching character too and work ethic I think I think they succeeded in that area okay we're excited to have the game and fish come up come forward we have a new director so this will be a good introduction and we will if you'll just state your name for the record and introduce who you are and welcome to Arkansas just push that button there you go
Speaker 114
1:00:32
thank you senator i appreciate that my name is doug schoenrock
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:00:36
and um i'm the new director for the arkansas game and fish commission an honor to be here um i grew up in the great state of tennessee and um came to arkansas at a very early age showing cattle at state fair
Speaker 119
1:00:50
and visiting the diamond mines and the boy scouts and uh so i've long had an affinity for the natural state and uh it's an honor to be here i
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:00:59
did uh i did go to the university of tennessee and i
apologize for that um but i am going to learn how to call the hogs i'm very uh interested in in arkansas athletics and uh um and i'm looking forward to uh getting up to fayetteville and seeing some of those events this fall especially um my conservation dna really took hold of me at a very early age and we're growing up on a farm just south of nashville about 80 miles the only rule in the summertime after our chores was be home of dark and so we took our fishing
rides and our pellet guns or 22s whatever we had and we were gone on our bikes and you know when you approach the world with that sense of wonderment on whatever you can get into as a kid that sticks with you for a long time and um that is what forged my dna and then moving forward into that um and after the university of tennessee i became involved a local level with a 501c3 a conservation organization called ducks unlimited and was honored to be on that board in 2002 and as a volunteer and ended up becoming the 45th president of ducks unlimited in 2020
uh during COVID I was a COVID president and when you make your money using doing 4,500 events a year and you can't go outside it was kind of hard but we pivoted to virtual events and did okay with that and then I became chairman of the board and I resigned that position in 2024 and started here early May of 25 been on the site since the first week of June so still kind of green but it is like drinking through a fire hose a lot of opportunities a lot of learning
and every minute is different and I'm very excited about that I believe that every minute is different because we we face the public in a lot of different endeavors and I'll go into some of those in detail as needed but we we're kind of a catch-all for a lot of things and And so no two minutes are the same. And honestly, we couldn't handle the volume of things we get without an extremely capable staff.
That's probably my most impressive takeaway from being here a short time is the quality of staff. And these folks work their passion, but they live their passion as well. and they like to get outside whether it's hunting or fishing or boating or canoeing or hiking or camping and they they live the natural state lifestyle and i'm very impressed with that to see the dedication of these individuals and how blessed we all are to be able to work in an area that we have passions for and that's pretty cool um i'm honored to be in front of the
legislature today in this subcommittee and i'm looking forward to working with each of you You know, our primary goal is to keep the natural state natural, and we're only going to do that with great partnerships, both here and with outside organizations, with NGOs, and most importantly, with the public. And so I'm very excited about the potential and the opportunity to do that. My leadership style, I've been in sales for over 40 years. Worked for two companies in my life, Sarah Lee.
I was in the meats division, so I'm sorry I don't know a lot about cheesecakes. But I was in the meat side, Jimmy Dean, Brian Foods, things of that nature, Broody's Farm. And my strength is relationship building. That's probably my primary strength. My experience has been based in sales and marketing and then analysis. I was on a significant mergers and acquisition team while at Sara Lee, which was a Fortune 50 company at that time. and so and then my leadership style with with my peers is what I call a trusting collaboration
with an expectation of results and I believe in what gets measured gets done and that's the management style that I'm bringing to this organization I'm following in some great footsteps former Austin Booth I've known Austin for many years I first encountered Austin when I was president of Ducks Unlimited, and we collaborated on what is now the GTR initiative in Arkansas. I went back to our headquarters, which is in Memphis, and challenged our communications
team to do a short film on the imperiled GTRs of Arkansas as a imperiled landscape, imperiled landscape. And so that's kind of where I've come, where I've been. And my goals for the organization real simple first of all is to engage more people with their outdoor passions in the natural state but we do that by providing increased access increased opportunities improved habitat and resource management for all passions
whether you like to climb rocks or shoot ducks I think we have to be public facing for all those secondly is to accelerate education um accelerate education of our young people which we were blessed to have the governor announced earlier this month or our step forward you know with our educational outreach program in classrooms with the pilot that's progressing well we're excited about that but um i think that we've missed a generation or two and maybe their parents even and we got to figure out a way to help those kids get dirt under their fingernails and get
outside no matter what they like to do. And we all grew up doing that. And I think that's something that today we are missing in education. And I'm excited to be part of Arkansas Game and Fish at a time when education is front and center. We have a great opportunity to lead the nation in outdoor education. And then thirdly, I'm a big believer in accelerating collaboration with peer organizations with the intent of enabling quality experiences, whether it's outdoor heritage or outdoor recreation heritage, state parks,
other agencies, including different NGOs, which we'll talk about at a future meeting about some of our partnerships with NGOs. But we need to collectively elevate the opportunities to go outside and do things in the natural state, not just for residents, but for non-residents alike to bring commerce to the state. that's kind of my 30,000 foot view with three and a
Speaker 122
1:07:44
half weeks on the on the ground and I can dive into details as much as I know but I don't know it all but I have a row full experts behind me who
who do and if I have to call on them I certainly will if not we'll certainly get back to you so that's really all I had to say ma'am and and but I'm open and willing to answer any questions
about fish wildlife habitat anything like that thank you and welcome to arkansas and thank you for being here and excited about your leadership your goals that you've stated um and your experience you know i've i think my first ducks unlimited banquet was when i was probably 13 14 years old
or 15 years old i don't know but um and then been participating you know in that organization pretty much all my life um so that's exciting i think your background in that is exciting um but i also you know i think it's really critically important just like you said just we've missed a few generations and i think that as a state of arkansas we've got to really get back to being the natural state but really also embracing making sure that hunting's not
just for the elite or for the wealthy or fishing is not just for the elite or the wealthy or whatever it may be and I think we've got to make sure like you said we have those access we have to have provide access for for hunters and fishermen and and so I think that's something I'm really really interested in making sure we do I think it may have been Governor Mike Huckabee when he
was governor did a program called hooked on fishing and not on drugs and i think it was
very very popular it's been very popular at mountain view schools um but because you had people and personnel there locally that really put a lot of effort into those types of programs but a lot of those programs that kind of started at maybe that that state level have kind of waned because you may or may not have people at those schools. But I think it's incumbent upon us as state agencies and state-level organizations to reignite those types of programs
because I can tell you those were the memories that these kids talk about for years and years and years and years is the ability to go out with your game and fish. They come and they stalk the pond and they provide opportunities for these kids and teach these kids to fish, and some kids have never fished before, never been exposed to that. And then the message, you know, about Hooked on Fishing and Not on Drugs is a great message and one that we need to continue to say, make this choice versus this choice.
This is what this choice gives you. This is what this choice gives you. And so it's a program I've been involved with for a long time locally. But things like that, I think I don't see a lot of that anymore from state-level agencies, and it's something I'm interested in just reaching this next generation. I know Representative Wardlaw and I, the legislation that was probably one of my favorite pieces of legislation was to be able to provide the lifetime hunting license for $500 if the child was under the age of 10.
Great, great bill. And it became a great, you know, I got all these text messages from grandpa's like, you just cost me a fortune this Christmas. But it's a great, it was a great Christmas gift. And, you know, it's such a great thing to do to put on the radar and to make those kinds of things special. And I could go to, I could spend so much time talking about this. So I'm excited that you're here. I'm excited for your leadership. I think we can do so many fabulous, great things in partnership and collaboration with our state parks and other law enforcement because you provide a very, very critical role with law enforcement and response as well.
At least you do in my area. And so I just appreciate your leadership. Welcome. And I'm excited, you know, to work with you in the future. I'm going to go to questions. Representative Ladyman. thank you madam chair um well
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:12:03
thank you for being here and talking to us about your background i appreciate that um i
don't know exactly how to ask this question but and you're new so you probably can't answer this but that's a great excuse i use sir if i can't
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:12:22
but my question relates to access you talked about that so and getting kids and other people involved in fishing and hunting and that sort of thing so um can we or what's your opinion on uh creating new areas like new lakes or new state parks close to population centers easy access for kids inner city kids and those kind of things and the reason i am asking this question in my district there's an old huge gravel pit that's a sore ice sore for the area
it has maintained water it's a good fishing spot so i take my grandkids down there and we catch big catfish down there to me you could turn that into a lake that would be accessible in a high population area so is that something that's doable what's your opinion of that i know it would take collaboration with a lot of different agencies to do something like that but can you just talk to me about would that be possible yes sir it is
Speaker 129
1:13:26
it is possible and to to play on the
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:13:30
get hooked on on fish not on drugs we did execute 350 fishing derbies this past year with over 15 000 participants this year i think we've already stocked over 20 000 pounds of fish for derbies that started in may early so we have a pretty strong outreach but to your question sir absolutely We work with partnering organizations. To me, not having been in government, it seems very simple. When I speak to the experts, it can be very complex.
And depending on the funding mechanisms used, and I'm learning to navigate those waters, yes, sir. But we do get requests frequently for new areas, new opportunities. And we will be relaying some big news in the future about some new opportunities for public access. that is in our mission statement is public support and and uh public opportunity and absolutely um it is paramount that we
Speaker 122
1:14:30
face the public and provide opportunity whether it's fishing hunting
hiking boating kayaking canoeing or whatever they want to do yes sir we are well aware of that and we do everything we can to incorporate that and i'd love to learn more about that specific example you gave me that might be an opportunity well
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
1:14:48
you know we have a number of uh places around the state where we need to reclaim those areas you know south of little rock there's a lot of those areas and if we could reclaim that and turn that into a good recreational site it would be great and we'd solve that problem of cleaning up an area and providing a really good area for people
to have recreation in and you talked about the fishing derbies they're great i took my grandsons up to the Corning Fish Hatchery and my seven-year-old caught a two and a half pound catfish you know one of the greatest things he's ever done so those are great and I appreciate those programs. Thank you sir I think that
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:15:24
one of the funniest pictures I saw in the last two weeks was a
Speaker 121
1:15:28
kid caught a 40 pound catfish on a Snoopy pole and that was interesting to
watch. Yeah the fishing derby at Mirror Lake is fabulous if you want to catch some beautiful rainbow trout and it's so
fun i spot i help sponsor it with y'all thank you so it's so fun representative uh ray thank
Representative David Ray
Unverified
1:15:52
i was just um i was just going to see if we could get a brief update on the renovation project at lake conway and specifically just um on the timeline if all of the rain and weather has affected that at all or if everything is still on
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:16:07
track thank you for your question sir and yes i can so lake conway um is fresh on my mind because we had a public
meeting there just last week and um the um the project two years ago when we announced it was a five-year project when we initiated the project we didn't have the significant rain that we have today and we were able to get in there pull the permits and do the work we've actually we're creating uh uh 28 miles of boating trails so we're in there with mulching equipment swamp equipment to grind the stumps down and then we'll clearly label those boating lanes for access safe access so folks don't stump out when they're running on that lake um so far we've had we've
completed six miles of that we still have three years to go on the project and we are on time to completed on time we also placing bedding habitat for panfish and bass in the lake and we're also providing adjacent property owners people who own property on conway fish beds that they can put on their own property their own bank line you know in the water of course but we are on on pace right now the next step of that project is spillway execution of improving the spillway so that we
can adequately remove water to effectively also manage Bell Slough which is right below that impoundment so I'm excited about Conway in fact my wife and I are looking at
Speaker 122
1:17:36
homes in that area right now because I think Conway is going to be a gem in the future and I say that only because I visited lakes such as White Oak where we've done a similar restoration work in years past and that's a mecca
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:17:52
for fishing now so i think conway is going to be fantastic um it will be
finished in three years and uh we're excited about uh about the opportunities there that we present
Speaker 122
1:18:03
in probably one of the largest population growth centers we
have in the state adequate sir okay to follow up on that um
also part of the district i serve is is part of lake Conway uh or near near that but public access points to Lake Conway is there any infrastructure that's going to be built um for public access to Lake
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:18:32
Conway I'm not familiar enough with the
those details of the project okay um I can assure you that the public access points that we currently have will be maintained and improved I'm not sure of any new public accents but I'll get back
to on that and then are we are we bringing in any partnerships to help with
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:18:53
that project um well you know our our biggest partner it has been the core to try to get the permits pulled um to my knowledge we don't have any other organizational partners who are um standing forward and helping
us either fund or execute the activity on that waterway well i i know i
know of of different non-profits and things like that that i'm not
sure if we ever went down that alley to we've been approached by some of the canoeing groups okay
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:19:20
um to to they have offered support on anything they were at the public meeting in fact two weeks ago okay um but but other other orgs like i'm not sure about tnc or anybody else ben might be able to give color
i was just thinking of of of of
nonprofit organizations that are very conservative uh conservation minded i know that they you know like to put resources towards projects like this i'm not sure if we've done any outreach towards any type of partnerships in the private sector or if that's a possibility i mean your sales and marketing so i
am too i'd be calling the whole entire world hey good morning ben
Speaker 144
1:20:05
batten deputy director arkansas game and fish commission our number one partner probably on the on the lake
project is the city of conway and the conway chamber of commerce they are planning to try to pull off a very large improvement on the north end of the lake that helps connect some of their trails water trail access some really neat things there's some funding mechanisms they're working on to see if that'll work or not besides that of course city mayflower has been helpful the county everybody you know in that way but if you have specific organizations you think might be willing to step in and hope we'd be okay
thrilled all right i appreciate that thank you um representative minx you're recognized thank you madam chair and
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:20:44
i know that uh you'll appreciate this line of
question i'm way over here just far away that that i'm about to ask are you familiar with astro tourism i'm not sir all right um so when when when people from uh you know say dallas or other large cities when they come to visit the ozarks or the natural state at night they're interested in seeing the milky way and fireflies right because by protecting the the natural nighttime environment and um and i know this is probably more of a state parks issue than than
what you've you know doing with the game and fish but uh when we install uh improper lighting at night it creates something called light pollution and light pollution has a major negative impact on on wildlife. Most people don't even realize how big of an impact it is. And so I just want to make sure that that is on your radar as you're managing our state resources that we're not only protecting these species during the daytime, but we're also taking reasonable efforts to
make sure they're protected at nighttime, not only for the benefit of, you know, the species themselves but also for promoting our uh you know like i said the nighttime environment because if you've ever gone camping in those arcs or even in tennessee at night you want to see the stars you want to see fireflies you want to see those nocturnal creatures and um if we're destroying that by putting in improper lighting then we're destroying a uh you know a huge opportunity like
I know the Buffalo River became our first night sky sanctuary within the state. And, you know, like I said, I just want to make sure, A, that that's on your radar and that we're being proactive as far as taking care of those resources at night. Thank you, sir. I am
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:22:43
aware of it. In fact, just a little fact, the city of Dallas, Texas, one of the most popular waterfowling areas south of Dallas on the Trinity River, has been imperiled by the sprawl of Dallas-Fort Worth
and the night light pollution it has on migrating waterfowl. Yep,
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:23:00
yep. Yeah, so major impact on all species. So, again, I just want to make sure it's on your radar as you look at that going forward. Thank you,
Madam Chair. Thank you for your suggestion. Yes, and the town of Gilbert, Arkansas, on the Buffalo River, is also a sanctuary for nighttime, what do we call it? dark skies that's right dark sky sanctuary i helped them get grants and worked with energy
it was it was a great it's a great project and they have festivals um i appreciate that future meetings definitely want to work with you and collaborate and as we close your comments if you just want to we've got all the different handouts and i don't know if you want to just tell the members
what they have on their desk real quickly thank you for the and i appreciate the calendar
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:23:50
thank you so we wanted to give you a little just a little snippet of some of the many things that we we do and we wanted to give you some pieces of information that show how we try to approach our mission with communications
and so one is the a pamphlet on the Saline River the Saline River just south of here this is a this shows a part a grouping of partner organizations with TNC, outdoor heritage, outdoor rec, state parks, where we have taken a riverway and worked collaboratively with them to provide public access and enjoyment to the public
for an area that we feel is important to protect. And we have identified several other waterways to work with this collaborative group to do the very same thing and produce similar publications for each of those as well and there's even a broader scale initiative going forward that if any of you have ever looked at the wyoming wonders website just go to wyoming wonders you can click on if the saline river wars in wyoming you could
click on that and not only it would tell you if you wanted to get a haircut within three miles of an access point or what to use for fish or where to get the best burger within five miles from there. And so one thing that the state parks and outdoor rec have worked with me on and us on is more of a collaborative effort to showcase the wonders of the natural state. And wouldn't it be nice to have that on a phone someday where you can just pull up on your phone and say, what can
i do within 20 miles of me well because i get phone calls all the time what what fish do i need to
you know what what fish are in the north sillimore well smallmouth bass well what do i use to catch the smallmouth bass or mirror lake you just go get a can of shoe peg corn you know and and maybe some power bait but i mean people people locally know that but you're right if you had a tool on your like an app that like really highlighted these are the areas or this is when you can kayak this is when you can't kayak that creek this is when you can kayak that creek or
or water levels where you should or shouldn't that's correct water levels where you can or cannot or you're going to drag you know this is what the the buffalo river too even though it's a national river we've got to make sure that we as the state of Arkansas are doing our part to promote that we're leaving so much on the table because we're not and the federal government doesn't provide the level of resources necessary really to promote the Buffalo River or to manage it correctly so that's a big big issue that I have because it falls a lot of times to Newton
County and Searcy County and sometimes Madison County as well just because and those counties are poor and they don't have the resources to really manage that level of tourism and you know and information that needs to be like organized organized information and communication So that's exciting, and I think that's going to be really, really exciting. Definitely a project I'd love to work on with you guys. Thank you. We are opportunity rich. Yeah, absolutely. I think so. And I think just promoting and advertising, but also directing.
And then that will also highlight, I think, the need for just parking spaces. You know, in Newton County, one of the Buffalo River Conservation Committee highlighted was you've got all these people visiting Hawksville Craig, which is a beautiful site to climb out to um hike out to and um but there's no parking so everybody just parks on the side of the road well what happens when there's an emergency the local sheriff can't they can't get emergency vehicles down those roads because everybody's parking on the side of the road because we've provided them no place to park in order to hike to hawksville
crack i mean that's just such an example of just missed opportunities of creating organization that gives everybody a more pleasurable opportunity and adventure, you know, if it's organized and it's nice and I've got a place to park and then I can go hike. And those kinds of things we just need to be more intentional and thoughtful about. So I'm excited about that. You're stating on that. Thank you.
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
1:28:11
Also in front of you is an example of how we have outreach to the public.
It's called CIP. It's a one-page. Actually, it's two pages, a document there. where we it's called conservation incentive program where we work with landowners to employ conservation practices on the landscape not necessarily for waterfowl it could be prescribed burning and remarkably successful program where we did it this year and we had over 1500 applicants on there and i think we awarded i don't know around four or five hundred um awards and they
weren't big awards I think they're $10,000 awards to and then we teach them how to employ nine different conservation practices on landscapes so very forward-facing very resounding praise from the public who utilized that program and we're excited to repeat it year one was a pilot we view it as wildly successful and we're looking forward to implementing it in year two then the other handout you would have would would be our chronic wasting disease annual report from
2024 we just wrapped up our our cwd plan that takes us through 2031 that will be going to publication very soon this is a report on our cwd program up through this past fall and then the last thing was our calendar that we which basically replaces the Arkansas Game and Fish Magazine or Arkansas Wildlife Magazine apologize that was not published in July instead we publish
a calendar in July every year those are the handouts before you thank you I really appreciate you bringing all of this for us and are there any other questions all right well you've done fabulous job and welcome again to Arkansas and we're excited to work with you and excited to have you with us and we'll work feature meetings and lots of projects to accomplish thank you so much and to the committee let us help you we
will thank you all right if there's no other business to come before the
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments by the Co-Chairs
C. Overview from Arkansas State Police
D. Overview of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC - GAME & FISH/STATE POLICE, Jul 8, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Senator Missy Irvin Chair
Unverified
Representative Dwight Tosh
Unverified
Mike Hager
Unverified
Speaker 17
Speaker 25
Speaker 26
Speaker 33
Representative Jack Ladyman
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
Speaker 65
Speaker 70
Speaker 24
Speaker 72
Speaker 78
Speaker 81
Representative RJ Hawk
Unverified
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
Speaker 103
Speaker 114
Doug Schoenrock
Unverified
Speaker 119
Speaker 122
Speaker 127
Speaker 129
Speaker 121
Speaker 133
Representative David Ray
Unverified
Speaker 144