A Wild Life in Law Enforcement
Officer BRet Gill helps safeguard Florida’s resources.
By Divya abhat
Credit: Karen Parker/ f WC
Given the nature of his job, Benjamin (Bret) Gill is not your average 27-year-old. He has pulled a woman engulfed in flames out of a burning
car, wrestled with a violent suspect resisting arrest, and
driven through the woods at 1 a.m. to stop an illegal doe
hunt. Yet it’s all in the line of duty for Gill, a key member
of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s law enforcement division and the Commission’s
2009 law enforcement officer of the year and 2010 State
Law Enforcement Chief’s Association Officer of the Year.
officer Bret Gill
(second from right)
and colleagues
confer with a
florida firefighter
(left) during the
massive Bugaboo
Scrub fire of 2007,
the largest fire in
state history. During
the blaze, Gill
urged homeowners
to evacuate and
excluded visitors
by blocking roads.
Facing fear is a part of Gill’s nature. He recalls racing
toward that burning car on a July evening in 2009. Seeing that the driver was dead, Gill immediately grabbed
and rescued the passenger, a woman gasping for air as
fire enveloped her legs. In dire situations, Gill treats
people as he would like to be treated: “I would hope that
if I were ever in a crash and my vehicle was on fire that
somebody would come and get me out.”
Such feats require skill born of extensive training and
experience. Gill well remembers his first day on the
job. It was a rainy day in 2005 when he and his fellow
trainees made their way to the training academy for an
intense physical workout—the final phase of a year-long
process to join the Commission. “We didn’t get to bed
until about 10 or 11 p.m.,” Gill says. A few weeks later,
Gill received “agency specific” training on various topics
including fish and wildlife conservation laws and ac-
cident investigations. After 29 weeks of training, he was
officially accepted onto the force and assigned to Union
County, Florida. “It’s the smallest county in Florida,” Gill
says, “with a ton of hunting … and thousands of acres of
nothing but woods.”
While working that remote terrain on opening day of
general gun season, 2008, Gill got a call from a hunter
who reported hearing shots from a neighboring campsite before legal shooting hours. When Gill got to the
campsite he sneaked behind the bushes and watched
four men surreptitiously pull a deer off their four-wheeler, talking all the while about having to return to
collect a doe that they had also shot. When they finally
left, Gill followed them, spotted their second kill, then
returned to the bushes and waited.
Fifteen minutes later the men returned with the doe
on their four-wheeler, pulled her off the vehicle, and
prepared to clean her. “That’s when I came out and
confronted them,” Gill says. He took down their license
information, confiscated their guns, and identified the
individuals who shot the doe. One of them had three
warrants for his arrest, two out of Union County and
one out of Arkansas. Gill arrested him, issued fines to
the rest, and donated the deer to a homeless shelter.
Nature and Nurture
Clearly Gill is persistent. When confronting people
on illegal hunts, his interrogations are often met with
resistance, denials, claims of ignorance about the law, or
unlikely excuses (such as “I was hunting a hog,” which is
legal year-round in Florida). Yet this has never deterred
Gill from probing further. “You keep asking the same
question, and you keep investigating, and eventually the
truth will be revealed.”
Gill says that his persistence, spirit, and enthusiasm
come from his father, who never lets a challenge get
him down. He also instilled a sense of respect for
wildlife in his only child. “Only kill things you’re going
to eat or you’re capable of eating,” he would say to
Gill, an ethic that became engrained. So, when a law
enforcement officer dropped by Gill’s high school during career day and talked about protecting wildlife, Gill
knew he had found his path. He applied to the Florida
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s law en-
