Who is charged with policing the Mississippi and other navigable rivers? The US Coast Guard? Or is this the task of state and/or local law enforcement agencies?
In Milwaukee (on Lake Michigan) we have a US Coast Guard station, but actually patrolling the water is the Milwaukee Police Department. I’m sure we have plenty of Dopers on the Mississippi, but my guess is that whatever city butts up against it would have their own PD or sheriffs department deal with anything that happens in it.
Also, this is just for little stuff, people falling in, crimes that start on land and end up in the water (car chases that go over bluffs for example) etc. Not major/federal stuff. Our Police Department, as I assume all others with water, has a dive team and between the lake and a handful of rivers, it gets used a handful of times a year.
The DNR or Dept of Fish and Game/Wildlife, I think, spend the most time actually policing the water but they’re mostly looking to make sure it stays clean and safe, not exactly making sure major drug transactions aren’t happening out in the water.
If what you’re interested in is who’s watching to see if a boat is carrying a load of drugs up from Mexico, that’s still the DEA/FBI.
When I was boating in Wisconsin it was the DNR who were the “lake police” (so to speak). In Chicago the regular police have police boats and patrol the shores of Chicago. The Coast Guard patrol more broadly.
And I think that’s mostly the case, but I think the DNR is more keeping an eye out for people drinking to much or fishing without a license, violating noise or wake ordinances, that kind of stuff. Just sort of keeping an eye out. But then, I don’t think that much stuff happens out on the Wisconsin Lakes.
It probably also just depends on where exactly you are. Milwaukee County doesn’t have any Lakes that actually need patrolling, so to speak, they (the MPD) get in when there’s a problem and I think they cruise the river system in summer. The majority of the fishing (where the DNR would be involved) in Milwaukee County is done from the shore.
Once you start getting a bit out of Milwaukee, it’s different. If you go to Lake Winnebago or Little Muskego Lake, that’s different. Fishing is more serious there. From what I understand, out on Lake Winnebago the DNR actually has helicopters keeping an eye on the ice fishing so people don’t take out too many sturgeon or the wrong kind of fish. They keep very strict control over that.
I suppose it probably has to do with what they’re looking for. In Milwaukee, they’re not really watching for crimes against nature, so it’s the police that watch the water. Get Up North and it’s the fishing/hunting stuff that they’re watching for so it’s the DNR in the water.
The Coast Guard is mainly concerned with smuggling and responding to emergencies. I would think that on Lake Michigan smuggling isn’t so much of an issue, with it being entirely US territory.
Stuff like watching out for drunk boaters is I think mostly the responsability of the local cops, altho I’m sure a Coast Guard patrol would bust you for it if they caught you.
Florida Marine Patrol here.
Houston & Harris County both have Marine Divisions to patrol the bayous. Also diving teams–who get jobs like seeing whether submerged vehicles were* driven* into the water.
Parks & Wildlife has game wardens who bust drunk boaters as well as check fishing licenses on rivers & lakes. All Texas lakes are dammed rivers. Except for Caddo Lake–which is also patrolled by alligators.
Of course, several enforcement groups keep their eyes on the Rio Grande…
I think you’re right in that I don’t think we’re a hot spot for smuggling but it should be noted that we’re connected to the St Lawrence Seaway so Lake Michigan (and the other Great Lakes), are connected to international waters and there are a constant stream of shipping boats entering and exiting the Port Of Milwaukee from, what I assume is, all across the world.
But I’d think that would be more of a Customs/FBI issue than a Coast Guard issue, but I really don’t know. I assume someone has an office down on the docks.
Drunks are basically “fish warden bait” in PA. Police, what departments actually have “river officers”, are looking for crime that extends into the waterways and the Coasties more emergency and cross-jurisdictional actions. You would be surprised how few PDs with river access around here actually have some form of patrol (and not just river rescue).
Generally speaking once you get inland, and even in close-in seashores, simple matters of small-craft safety violations, emergencies or general law enforcement are within the ability of local and state law-enforcement and emergency-response agencies, including Natural Resources Police to handle things like drunk boating.
USCG handles that which is within its sphere of jurisdiction – maintenance of aids to navigation, shipping inspection; *federal-*level law enforcement and security or safety regulations; maritime SAR/disaster response that’s beyond local/state capabilities. Of course, when you are on a seashore it’s highly more likely that you’ll be within range of more CG assets and there’s an increased chance of interaction. So you have a small tender boat homeported in Omaha to handle buoys and lights in the Missouri, but Nebraska and Iowa can handle some drunk dudes acting stupid in their fishing boat depending what side of the river they finally run aground.
The Mississippi Basin is under the 8th (non-Florida Gulf) CG District, with 3 sectors covering respectively the Upper Mississippi and the Missouri; the Lower Mississippi, Arkansas and Red; and the Ohio and Tennessee. The Great Lakes constitute a whole Coast Guard District onto themselves (9th) where they get to do more of their familiar functions, including icebreaking.
Both Customs and the Guard have offices down on the harbor. They’re right off 794. For a while there was a company that brought a small cruise ship in close to where the old Pieces of 8 restaurant was. Both the CG and Customs were down there going through stuff that was coming in, and wanding people getting back on the ship.
Also, FYI, in Wisconsin the DNR does not need probable cause to stop a boat on the water. They can make a stop just to check safety equipment, tags, battery covers, you name it.
Pieces of 8…that’s a childhood memory. I’m not sure if I ever went there, but due to where my family lived (on the North Shore) and where the family business is (on the south end of Milwaukee, I’ve been over the Hoan, literally, probably 20-30+thousand times. Anytime someone mentions Pieces of 8, it reminds of when I was a kid and seeing that sign at the end of the bridge.
I can’t find the date for when it closed, but it looks like it was more recently than I remember it being. All I can find is that the Harbor House opened in 2010, but I thought Pieces of 8 was gone long before then.
Anyways, that port must be where I see that pirate ship looking thing set up during the summer from time to time.
There was an item a year or two ago about an National Hockey League player being charged with impaired boating. (IIRC, the charges were dropped). The thing that astounded me was that the Minnesota Fish and Game wardens were empowered to demand a blood sample. The general impression I read about in Canada was that it was a case of “boating while black”.
Just googling Fish and Game to come up with someone’s wiki I got the CA dept of Fish and Game and it says there that they are part of the CA DNR and that they are “armed law enforcement officers with statewide arrest authority”. So, ignoring the racial component for a moment, yes, you can be arrested by a DNR agent. They’re basically state troopers.
Now, it didn’t say any more than that, so if one of them saw you tearing down the highway at 90mph or even drunk driving on a public road, I don’t know that they’d have any jurisdiction there, but dealing with people are drinking to much while boating is one of the things that they do.
Yeah, it was kind of an oddball location.
And food at Pieces of 8 wasn’t very good. Always got low reviews IIRC.
I read a lot of that while I was trying to find the closing date. I hear the Harbor House is supposed to be good. I think I’ve been there once or twice.
Come to think of it, one of the times I was there, Ted Perry was there also and it was like the third time in a month I ‘bumped into him’ at a restaurant. I saw him at Palermo Villa and RiverFront Pizza right around the same time as well.
The federal government could take over law enforcement duties for any “navigable waterway” under the principle of navigable servitude (short version: navigable waterways are channels of interstate commerce and therefore subject to federal regulation under the Commerce Clause, per Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1.)
In practice, the feds rarely exercise criminal jurisdiction over any channel of interstate commerce. This is why you also don’t see federal highway patrols on your local highways.