The voters in the rural areas of the Haines Borough have spoken, and they’re not interested in on-call service by the townsite police department, even at the relatively low starting price of $70,000.
Does this mean residents in outlying areas don’t want police, or that they don’t want to pay for it? It’s difficult to know, but a good rule of thumb is that people are willing to pay for what they really want. Also, $70,000 spread out over the outside-townsite population amounted to an estimated $70 per year increase in taxes for a rural household.
Where doe that leave the issue of policing outside the townsite?
On Tuesday, Oct. 22, the assembly voted 4-2 to return to the policy that existed previous to the arrival of Police Chief Heath Scott in late summer 2016, when police unilaterally decided to start responding to rural calls, even when not specifically requested to do so by Alaska State Troopers.
That policy limited our townsite police department to the townsite (the city limits of the City of Haines, the municipality that launched and maintained the police department) except when requested by state troopers, a policy that existed for about 50 years.
A state trooper, Trent Chwialkowski, still responds to crimes and emergencies outside the townsite, although his primary duty is as the valley’s wildlife trooper. When Chwialkowski or the trooper dispatcher in Ketchikan deems it necessary, townsite police can respond to emergencies in borough’s rural areas.
(The same agreement allows Chwialkowski to assist Haines police on emergencies inside the townsite.)
It’s true that the removal of the blue-shirt state trooper post here in January 2017 amounted to a reduction from two to one officer responding to crimes in the borough’s rural areas. Also, there are state trooper bureaucrats who apparently insist on telling borough officials that they don’t consider the borough their jurisdiction.
(That’s an interesting position, considering that Chwialkowski is still on the job and that troopers still send a blue-shirt trooper to Klukwan, the Native village that sits in the middle of the valley’s largest, roaded, rural area.)
The appropriate response by the Haines Borough should be to lobby our new governor and state representative and state senator in the Alaska Legislature to direct troopers to restore blue-shirt service here.
State troopers are charged with enforcing state laws in the state’s rural areas, something they’ve done since statehood. The upper Chilkat Valley, Mud Bay and Lutak are rural areas. The troopers have seen some budget cuts and difficulties recruiting, so it’s excusable that the blue-shirt position here hasn’t been funded.
But if troopers are abandoning their responsibility to rural areas of Alaska, that’s a policy matter that merits statewide attention.
In 2002, when the Haines Borough and City of Haines consolidated into a single government, the City of Haines police force remained, to patrol the historical boundaries of the City of Haines.
That made sense because police service is expensive, and towns the size of Haines can’t be expected to provide police over large geographic areas. Which is why state troopers also provide police service to rural areas of the Mat-Su Borough and to other boroughs with large, rural areas.
This issue has never been about what the Haines Borough should provide, although some would like to cast it that way. It’s why the State of Alaska isn’t living up to its obligations to serve the rural residents of Alaska, and what we can do about it.
That needs to be our first mission.