Five Wisconsin Native American tribes and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission are expanding their law enforcement training.
The expansion will be funded by more than $2 million in U.S. Department of Justice grants. The three largest grants – which amount to more than a half-million dollars each – go to the police departments on the Lac Courte Oreilles, Lac Du Flambeau and St. Croix Chippewa reservations.
U.S. attorney John Vaudreuil says the funds will flow through the DOJ office in Madison. “We work pretty closely with the police forces of all those tribes,” says Vaudreuil. “They can use it for training, equipment, programs – it's really a wide variety.”
The law enforcement arm of the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission will be getting $348,000. The agency's chief warden, Fred Maulson, says some of that money will be spent on winter survival training, so officers can “learn to survive if caught out doing their daily activities in the woods, if their snowmobile broke down.”
Maulson says that training will also be open to state wardens and county deputies, “so that it's not just one sided. We all are doing the same kind of jobs, but maybe in a different area.”
Maulson says the grant will also be used to hire a youth outreach coordinator charged with running programs to get reservation youth involved in more outdoor activities. He says those programs will be aimed at reducing childhood obesity by getting reservation kids off the couch in front of the TV and out into the woods to exercise and learn about the outdoors.
