A sheriff in Wyoming – the land of ranchers and bison, the state that maintains rodeo is a sport – has banished cowboy boots and hats from the wardrobes of his deputies.
The newly elected sheriff, Stephen Haskell, now requires the deputies of Sublette County to wear a black baseball cap and boots, along with black pants and a tan shirt, rather than the eclectic array of western gear they were previously permitted to wear. The new rule has rankled some, including veteran deputy Gene Bryson, who retired after decades on the force last week. Bryson bluntly told the local Caspar Star-Tribune: “I am not going to change.”
Haskell instituted the new policy because rubber-soled boots have better traction over the snow and ice that envelops Wyoming’s mountains and plains every winter. He also said the single uniform will encourage teamwork and professionalism. Speaking about the old uniforms, Haskell told the Star-Tribune his deputies “looked like the Skittles platoon. We had a rainbow of colors.”
Haskell’s headquarters is in the small city of Pinedale, which was recently named by True West magazine a “true western” town. The editor of True West, Bob Boze Bell, told the Guardian that the changes “upset” him and were symptomatic of how “the west that I know and love is evaporating”.
“I just hate it. I hate that western heritage is going away,” he said. “They want the cops to all look like they look in Bangkok or Frankfurt, Germany. I guess in a way I’m an old man on my lawn shouting ‘get off!’ but these western things made the area distinctive.”
But today, Bell bemoaned, “it’s all metrosexual, gotta look the same”. Bell blamed the changes in part on the migration of easterners who are “attracted to the charm of the place, but then they want to kill the very charm that they came for”. He said the way people speak and live in the west “don’t make it a better place” but are the qualities that make it home.
Haskell is no easterner; he grew up in Wyoming and worked as a semiprofessional rodeo rider for several years. And the rebel deputy Bryson, who is 70, admitted he had planned to retire this year anyway.
Pinedale’s mayor and others have supported Haskell’s changes, which dictate nothing about the large and colorful boots, belt buckles and headwear that many Wyomingites love to adorn themselves with in their free time, and which men and women like Bell cherish as emblems of the west.
For the Sublette County sheriff’s department, the new uniforms may have subtle psychological consequences. Studies suggest that uniforms, depending on their details – whether they are militaristic, obscure the wearer’s face, etc – can encourage types of behavior that fit the characteristics of the raiment.
