Alaska’s Uneven Rural Law Enforcement System Often Leaves Remote Villages With No Cops
A tiny Alaskan village got a police officer. He’s never had to make an arrest. Meanwhile, larger communities with more crime have often been left behind as the state’s two-tiered policing crisis gets worse.
This article was produced in partnership with the Anchorage Daily News, a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.
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In his first seven months as a village public safety officer in the remote Alaska village of Chenega, Andrew Jonda has enjoyed world-class fishing and gorgeous ocean views.What he hasn’t done is make a single arrest.That’s because the community Jonda has been hired with public money to protect is home to only 40 to 60 people. “The crime rate is much lower than other places around the rest of Alaska and the U.S.,” he said.Which raises a question: When villages 10 times as large go without law enforcement of any kind, why is Chenega one of the last Alaska communities served by a VPSO?An analysis by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica has found that as the number of Alaska VPSOs sharply declined in recent years, the scant remaining officers are increasingly likely to work in communities with fewer than 100 residents. The towns and villages served by VPSOs today have fewer Alaska Natives residents, higher per capita income levels and are more likely to be on the road system than in 2005, our review found.The trend, driven by poor recruitment and a lack of infrastructure in the most vulnerable communities, leaves some of the most remote and largest villages unprotected.
But the state also denied requests to pay for VPSO recruitment advertising and for equipment such as fingerprint scanners, evidence lockers and anti-suicide blankets designed so they cannot be rolled into a noose, according to a Daily News and ProPublica review of state Department of Public Safety contracts.Of the $55,775 that VPSO employers requested for recruitment and advertising to attract new candidates, the Department of Public Safety denied all but $15,775. The Northwest Arctic Borough, which serves 10 Inupiaq villages, has no VPSOs and asked for $1,000 in monthly recruitment funding. The state OK’d $200.Dunleavy told delegates at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention this month in Fairbanks that the state would fund any VPSO positions for which there are viable candidates. Asked moments later why the state denied a majority of requests for recruitment funding, he did not directly answer.“All I can answer is what we’ll be doing forward,” he said. “We’re going to be funding all the positions and the recruits that the nonprofits are able to find.”Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Megan Peters said some equipment funding and recruitment spending was denied because of the small number of remaining officers. Last year, $4.1 million that the department gave to the VPSO program was returned to state coffers because of job vacancies, Peters wrote in a response to questions.“Grantees asked for [a higher] amount despite the fact that many of them are not able to spend the money they were previously appropriated because they are not filling their vacant positions and are not able to retain some VPSOs,” she wrote. A review of VPSO grants shows regional nonprofits spend as much as 35% of their awards on overhead or “indirect costs.” A former public safety commissioner, Bill Tandeske, said that figure should be no higher than 15%.Price said the state made several changes to the funding agreements VPSO employers signed in July, in hopes of attracting more applicants and speeding the hiring process. Most significantly, the length of VPSO training was shortened from 16 weeks to eight weeks in order to allow village candidates to return home for hunting and fishing seasons.The state Legislature has created a task force to recommend additional fixes for the program. Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage, said new proposals should be ready by January.Jonda, the former Eagle Scout working in tiny Chenega, said he moved to the Prince William Sound island from Tucson, Arizona. He dreamed of living in Alaska and the job, starting at $26.79 an hour, could help pay down student debt.Jonda said he’s quickly finding his place in the village. He’s invited to bonfires and fishing trips. “There’s so few people, so everybody sticks together,” he said.Here’s Gov. Dunleavy moments after leaving the AFN stage. pic.twitter.com/TG0TZWSRLt
— Kyle Hopkins (@kylehopkinsAK) October 17, 2019
Kyle Hopkins is an investigative reporter at the Anchorage Daily News. Email him at khopkins@adn.com and follow him on Twitter at @kylehopkinsAK.
Note: This story originally appeared on ProPublica. It is published under a Creative Commons license.
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