Printable VersionSupervisor Lt. Jay Diez
The Special Investigations Unit of the Law Enforcement Division function and strategy is to combat white-collar criminal activity involving natural resources. Increased state and federal management concerns of living natural resources have led to a dramatic increase in law enforcement responsibilities. Effective enforcement of all regulations is integral to management processes designed to protect, conserve and maintain sustainable levels of living natural resources. State and federal resource regulations mandate a comprehensive and specialized compliance programs.
A new type of resource criminal has been identified. This bad guy is using white-collar criminal activity to benefit financially at the expense of the resource and legal participants. Some of the types of crimes which the Special Investigative Unit focuses on includes: License residency fraud, false record keeping, smuggling, mislabeling, false labeling, illegal interstate shipments of fish and seafood products, illegal purchases, and sales of illegal fish and seafood products to name a few. Incentives to commit these types of violations are high because the rewards for such actions can be considerably great. The Enforcement Division through its Special Investigative Unit is dedicated to eliminate outlawing activity for financial gain.
Compliance with all regulations is essential to the effective management of any species. In fisheries, a disregard for the regulations inevitably undermines fishery management efforts by skewering the data on which harvest guidelines and allocation decisions are made. The long-term effect of uncontrolled violations is a denigration of fisheries, sometimes to the point of decimation.
Ideally enforcement would have the capability to detect a sufficient number of violations to deter any purposeful violations of the law, and reduce to insignificance the effects of undetected violations on the achievement of management goals.
The most important variable in the equation of natural resource management is the ability for law enforcement to gain compliance. Since the ability to detect violations is fundamental to deterring violations specialized enforcement is essential. The impact of criminal activity on the natural resources is immeasurable. Much of the Special Investigative Units time is focused on the illegal commercialization of fish and seafood products. More and more violations of fishery regulations are deemed a cost of doing business. The existence of this high volume, high cash business and compelling products unfortunately lays the grounds for corruption. Any non-compliance has an impact on the achievement of management goals.
The Special Investigative Unit gives the public specialized law enforcement personnel to provide the best level of compliance in these specific areas. Because of the complexities that exist and which will continue to evolve in resource management, specialized law enforcement personnel strive to obtain compliance in specific areas of focus. The Special Investigative Unit provides personnel that have specific knowledge and time dedicated to perform complex investigations in all areas under the Departments jurisdiction. This unit also provides industry personnel with the best educational mechanism to increase compliance and furthers the professionalism of both industry and law enforcement.
The Special Investigative Unit allows increased monitoring of landings, increase effectiveness of dockside inspections, increase in statistical monitoring of specific fishery resources and increase ability to respond to complaints of illegal activates.
The Special Investigative Unit was established to best serve the public, user groups and provide an increase reliability to the management principles, better protect states natural resources and bring justice to those out to abuse the resources.
For more information, please email questions to Lt. Jay Diez
jdiez@wlf.louisiana.gov