The State Of Alaska Is In Desperate Trouble

I had to think through whether or not to post this.......considering what @Don Alaska might think of me for doing so. I mean no offense; I was shocked by the article's content, the title above is used as a "lead" to draw-in readership. I believe the title is misleading. See what you think:

"There is no place in this country, and very few places in the world, like Alaska. Its sheer enormity is overwhelming"

"But, to the people living there, Alaska is a place like any other place and, right now, the state of Alaska is in desperate trouble. The folks at ProPublica teamed up with the staff of the Anchorage Daily News to produce a report on the state's shattered system of local law enforcement. There is a village called Stebbins there, up along the Bering Strait, in which every local police officer has been convicted at one time or another of domestic violence."

"Mike was a registered sex offender and had served six years behind bars in Alaska jails and prisons. He’d been convicted of assault, domestic violence, vehicle theft, groping a woman, hindering prosecution, reckless driving, drunken driving and choking a woman unconscious in an attempted sexual assault. Among other crimes. “My record, I thought I had no chance of being a cop,” Mike, 43, said on a recent weekday evening, standing at his doorway in this Bering Strait village of 646 people. He was wrong. On the same day Mike filled out the application, the city of Stebbins hired him, handing him a policeman’s cellphone to answer calls for help. “Am I a cop now?” he remembers thinking. “It’s like, that easy?” "

"In Stebbins alone, all seven of the police officers working as of July 1 have pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges within the past decade. Only one has received formal law enforcement training of any kind."

See: https://frontier.yahoo.com/entertainment/state-alaska-desperate-trouble-190100016.html

I have personally made no conclusions regarding this. Others may.
Frank

 

No offense, @Frank Sanoica. We are indeed in trouble, but for different reasons than outlined in the article. Law enforcement in the bush communities has always been a problem. A village of 646 people with 7 "police" officers? There are two kinds of local law enforcement officers in bush communities--Village Public Safety Officers (VPSOs) who are trained and paid by the State of Alaska, and Village Police Officers (VPOs) who are controlled and paid by the village. Of course the State Troopers are responsible for the entire state and are in direct contact with the VPSOs. The VPOs can call them, but are not in direct contact with the Troopers. The VPSOs have to meet fairly strict conduct and training standards, while the VPOs only have to meet the standards of the village elders. It generally is difficult to fill any of these positions, so the VPOs are sometimes whoever will take the job. Notice that the story only addresses one village. I suspect every state has a small town who could have similar problems.

 

Yep. You’re right @Don Alaska that there are other small towns that have similar problems.
One town in Louisiana had a sheriff who would sit outside the town limits and pull people over for speeding.
When it came time to read the ticket, he would give the ticket to them to read aloud and fill in the necessary blanks.
If a “speeder” didn’t abide by the sheriff’s rules of ticket giving then the victim might receive a blow to the head just to get their attention.

The thing is that the sheriff had his own rap sheet stemming from other towns where he would frequently get drunk and start a ruckus.
Also, the reason his speeding victims had to fill out their own tickets is because he couldn’t read nor write.
He was finally sent packing but not until he had spent quite a few years abusing his position.

 

I forgot to mention that the main towns in the bush, Dillingham, Bethel, Nome and Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow) all have regular police forces of various sizes, magistrates (and judges in some cases) and prisons or jails. Some of the other smaller villages have small jails that are mostly drunk tanks nothing more. The size and scale of Alaska baffles most folks, as it is about 1/5 the size of the lower 48 and only has roads in about 1/4 of that area, Law enforcement and medical care are problematic. When I worked in the bush, I worked at a hospital of 60 beds that covered an area the size of the state of Oregon--one small hospital--and served around 100 small villages that were not connected by road. It has since improved, as they opened two walk-in clinics in two of the larger villages in the region.

 

@Don Alaska: The VPSOs have to meet fairly strict conduct and training standards, while the VPOs only have to meet the standards of the village elders. It generally is difficult to fill any of these positions, so the VPOs are sometimes whoever will take the job.

Have they ever tried to recruit from other states, with incentives to make it worthwhile to people who wouldn't ordinarily want
to live in a remote location?

Having someone who is a complete thug (choking a woman unconscious in an attempted sexual assault) show up when
you call for help - hopefully, there aren't any women alone who have to decide whether they should take a chance
who might answer their call for help.

 

I doubt small villages have the money to do much "recruiting."

 

Unless you have actually been there--and even most urban Alaskans have not--one cannot understand the conditions under which many of these people live. Some of the smaller villages still use "honey buckets", in which the toilet facilities are buckets, usually with chemicals to keep odors down, that the entire family (sometimes the extended family lives together) uses, as outhouses are not possible in some areas. Almost all have water and sewage deliveries by truck were possible, as sewers and water pipes freeze in the winter. Not many people want to live in those conditions, so recruiting from outside isn't practical, and, as @Beth Gallagher said, no money for recruiting and not much to pay the officers either (for the VPOs).

 

I would imagine many of these villages are tribal in nature and probably not fond of outsiders or government interference. In remote areas, there is always a chance of corruption and self serving folks taking positions. It's probably quite complicated.

 

Quite right, @Bess Barber. The tribal entities are quite all right with accepting government funds, but want no interference in how the money is spent. The control issue is why VPOs exist at all. The tribal councils want control of what laws are enforced and which are not.

 

OT Even in Siberia, if NY Times has it right, the people use an outhouse "even in the bitterest cold."
The elderly have to move to a warmer climate to survive.

If they don't want government interference, they shouldn't get government (taxpayers') money.
Deputizing people with known violent records - sounds like the wild west or something Congress would approve.

 

It isn't the cold that makes the outhouse impossible, it is the permafrost. An outhouse on permafrost simply sinks into the ground. I am sure Siberia has it too, but it is not everywhere. Nome and Kotzebue have underground heated city water, but Bethel does not, as it is on permafrost. Even at my present location on the road system, I have some permafrost on my property. It is called discontinuous permafrost. I gotta say, though, that using an outhouse at -40 F./C. is unpleasant in any case. Some of my friends who had a homestead with an outhouse in the interior used a pee bucket inside the house in the winter. They had a number of children, and the bucket was kept on the porch in the winter and brought into the heated space for use, then place back outside. When it was full, it was brought in to thaw slightly, then taken out and inverted over their garden space as fertilizer. By winter's end, they had a garden of tall, round ice cubes that slowly melted into the soil, providing a fertile garden for their crops. The outhouse was only used for "serious" business in the winter, and the stays were brief.

 

How totally disgusting, @Don Alaska.









Passive aggression is nothing more than sneaky, cowardly aggression.

 

I was actually going to make a similar statement, but didn't want to offend you in case you have an Indian family member or something. I had a friend in the military who's wife was from one of the islands there. They received around $3000 for her and each kids as a payment from the government. I think all native Americans get it. This was several decades ago. Probably a higher amount now. Plus free health care, food stamps and land. I wish I had some reparation money from something that occurred over 100 years ago.