JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri State Highway Patrol will have until the end of the boating season to make strides in its organizing and training for water patrol duty, before the agency has to report back to a legislative review committee.

State Representative Diane Franklin chairs the House Review Committee On The 2011 Water Patrol Division Merger. That committee grilled the highway patrol last fall, as the agency faced serious questions about training and effectiveness after the handcuffed drowning of 20-year-old Brandon Ellingson on May 31, 2014.

The committee did not address the drowning specifically, but focused on whether the 2011 merger of the Water Patrol and Highway Patrol had improved or hindered operations, particularly on the water. Multiple legislators from the Lake of the Ozarks area sit on the committee, along with other representatives from districts with significant bodies of water.

After conducting hearings across the state, the committee gave the patrol a list of recommendations in December 2014, with the mandate to report back in June on how well those changes had been implemented.

Franklin says the committee has already seen marked progress in the agency, and so has delayed the review until this fall.

“They’ve done a good job, so we think it’s better to wait now until the fall to see what the results are,” Franklin said, noting the June date was meant to give the MSHP “a push.”

Specifically, Franklin pointed to the agency’s move to make Captain Matt Walz the Deputy Director of Water Patrol — a role meant to give Walz, who has extensive experience patrolling the Lake of the Ozarks, specific influence in future decisions about water patrol operations within the MSHP.

Franklin explained Walz’s first move: “What he did was go throughout the state between January and April, and drawing on the experience he had previously in the water patrol… put together a plan of what the water patrol coverage should look like in those areas during the boating season.”

She added, “He made those recommendations and that’s what they are working off of now.”

One major change Walz has recommended is the length of trooper shifts for water patrol. When the Missouri Water Patrol was a standalone agency, troopers worked 12-hour shifts, but when the Highway Patrol absorbed the agency, the shifts were reduced to eight hours. Walz has recommended a return to 12-hour shifts.

Additionally, the MSHP has added another patrol zone at the Lake of the Ozarks, which is specifically a water patrol zone. Previously, multiple zones included portions of the lake. Troopers within this new zone are trained to work specifically on the water.

“There’s none of this, ‘A little bit of training gets you on the water,’” Franklin emphasized, referencing criticism the committee heard last fall from some who said the training process for some troopers before they patrolled the water was inadequate. The agency had adopted a practice of using “supplemental troopers” — individuals who typically patrolled roads, but who were used on busy bodies of water like Lake of the Ozarks on busy weekends. Trooper Anthony Piercy was working as a supplemental trooper when he was driving the boat from which Brandon Ellingson fell. Piercy later suggested inadequate training had played a role in that day’s events.

MSHP Sergeant Randy Henry, who has patrolled the Lake of the Ozarks for nearly three decades, spoke out strongly against the Highway Patrol’s training of supplemental troopers, last fall at the committee hearing in Jefferson City. Randy has recently run into trouble at the agency and is facing a disciplinary review; it’s unclear whether that is connected to his testimony last fall.

In addition to more rigorous training for water patrol troopers, Franklin says Walz has plans to use the spring and fall months for water patrol troopers to go through training, work on equipment, and conduct other activities. During the deep winter months, some of those troopers—who had originally patrolled the roads before the 2011 merger but had moved to water patrol after it—will be put on the highways.

More details on that plan, as well as numbers and reports from Walz’s changes this summer will all be set before the review committee this fall. Another review has been tentatively set for two years from the date the recommendations were made—likely sometime in early 2017.


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