Residents in these communities sometimes have to wait hours, or even days, for a trooper to respond to an emergency. (Of that number, about 70 communities had no local police of any kind, meaning no village city police officers or tribal officers.) The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported in May that 98 villages - communities with a total population of 30,000 - had no state-funded law enforcement at some point in 2019. With a limited number of troopers available statewide, those who stand to lose out are villages, many with predominantly Alaska Native populations that have no law enforcement of any kind. Alaska State Troopers Quinn Nardini, left, and Anderson look for a man who had reportedly created a disturbance at a store in Butte.
They, too, use troopers to respond to burglaries, domestic violence calls and other incidents that in other states would be handled by city police or county sheriffs. And since then, the population here has grown by 41%.Ī similar scenario is playing out in other well-populated areas outside city limits, including on the outskirts of Fairbanks and on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage. In addition to search and rescue missions, felony investigations and highway patrol, they also must protect any area where residents can’t or won’t pay for their own cops.īut what happens when one such community is also one of the most highly populated and easily accessible places in Alaska? Fifteen years ago, a blue-ribbon task force recommended the Matanuska-Susitna Borough adopt police powers and begin paying for its own law enforcement. Troopers like Anderson work for a state police agency created in 1953 to provide basic law enforcement in areas too small or too remote to employ local police. Many far-flung Native villages go unprotected while mostly wealthier, and mostly non-Native, communities on the road system receive the lion’s share of state-funded law enforcement. Nowhere in Alaska is the two-tiered justice system more evident than here in the fastest-growing region of the state. Get Our Top InvestigationsĮmail address This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. “I am the closest unit, and I’m 17 miles away,” Anderson said.
#STATE POLICE THE WILD AT HEART SERIES WINDOWS#
Leaving the Wasilla city police headquarters behind, he soon entered Palmer and passed a second city Police Department equipped to respond to such emergencies, the red and blue flashers of his patrol car reflecting in windows like Christmas lights.īecause this emergency fell just outside of Palmer city limits, it too was considered a job for troopers, not city police. A housesitter outside the neighboring city of Palmer had just pulled a gun on a trespasser who was now on his knees, hollering for help.Īnderson punched the address into his screen, hit his siren and gunned the engine. As he steered past the parked RVs and snowmobile trailers, his radio chirped with new urgency. The trooper never made it to the scene to hear the wife’s side of the story. One of just 304 members of the elite, state-paid police force responsible for protecting all of Alaska, including remote towns and villages, Anderson motored 2 miles outside city limits to a subdivision of $400,000 houses. Instead, Alaska State Trooper Ryan Anderson hopped in his Ford Explorer. (She lives up the road.)īut it wasn’t a city cop, paid by local sales taxes, who took the call. Maybe an officer could go talk to her? A routine request on a routine night for the Police Department of this small suburban city, made famous by former Mayor Sarah Palin. Nothing violent, he said, but she threatened to carve a word in the paint of his luxury pickup: CHEATER.
WASILLA, Alaska - The man appeared around dinnertime in the parking lot of the city Police Department, asking to see a cop. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
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