Crime & Courts

Troopers hire from Outside, but prefer homegrown recruits

Future Alaska State Troopers, municipal officers and park rangers stood at attention in alphabetical order upon reaching the airport baggage claim in Sitka, a rainy island town on Alaska's panhandle. Smack dab in the middle of the Baranof Island community sits the state's Department of Public Safety Academy.

Twenty potential law enforcement officers flew into town Feb. 23 for the Alaska law enforcement training program, ALET. Municipal officers already hired by five separate departments statewide fell in line alongside 10 untrained troopers. (They've already been hired on as troopers when they matriculate at the academy.)

Six of those troopers flew north from their homes in the contiguous United States. They hail from six different states: Georgia, Indiana, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Washington. The remaining cadets are Alaskans. Although the average class size is about 30, the composition of the class fits the general makeup of new hires: 60 percent from Outside.

Academy Commander Lt. Chad Goeden said the school is a paramilitary organization and includes the associated regimentation, like pressed uniforms and marching.

"We do that to instill self-discipline. They're going to need it when they go out and work on their own," Goeden said.

Municipal officers train for 15 weeks, while troopers stay on for an additional three weeks. During the more than four months of training, trooper students hone driving, shooting and procedural skills. They undergo a regiment of tests, from spelling and radio codes to firearms and physical fitness.

Enticing potential officers with reality TV

Ultimately, the state wants more homegrown troopers, but Alaskans just don't want the job. Troopers partly blame myths about the rural posts, which in the 1980s and early '90s entailed substandard housing and forced assignments. Now, Bush troopers are assigned based on a lottery, though if no one opts to patrol the state's tiny rural communities sprinkled among Alaska's vast wilderness, they can be given a compulsory assignment. It's in their contracts.

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The Department of Public Safety is continuously seeking new hires, but nationwide, career seekers are avoiding law enforcement.

"It's a nationwide trend, and we're not immune from it," Goeden said. "It's been about five years this has been going on, but Alaska's economy helped with recruitment. They saw our state wasn't facing state law enforcement layoffs; we weren't facing the same economic struggles. There are a lot of people who move up here for work, and they go through this academy."

Recruitment efforts include using social media and in-state and Outside job fairs, commercials and banner advertisements at malls.

The National Geographic reality TV show "Alaska State Troopers" has helped immensely with enticing potential officers to look northward, said recruiter Sgt. Luis Nieves. The show has stimulated interest in Alaska's troopers to an international level. He gets calls from fans in Europe, even South Africa, he said.

But Alaskans make the best troopers, Nieves said, as they're better acquainted with the state's various quirks -- unforgiving and unpredictable weather, isolation and darkness, statewide alcohol abuse and persistent sexual abuse.

The 30 or so cadets are whittled down from between 700 and 1,000 applicants. The thousand hopefuls are considered during two hiring cycles each year, each of which which can last up to 11 months. They need a GED or high school diploma to be considered, while a bachelor's degree often means more pay.

Sadly, applicants often fail to take one of the most important requirements into consideration: physical fitness. Nieves said he's had people fly hundreds of miles for an interview and initial evaluation, only to discover they can't do a single pushup.

'Preference to Alaskans'

Then there are the spouses, who are interviewed as well. Nieves makes sure to communicate the possibility of living in a rural community. He'll make his final recommendations based on the answers of the recruits and their significant others.

The problem is, about a quarter of these families don't have what it takes to live off the road system in Alaska. There's a 25 percent "natural attrition rate" because people realize it's not for them, Nieves said.

"We give preference to Alaskans for a number of reasons," the recruiter said. "They're more likely to stick it out; spouses aren't surprised when snow stays on the ground for a good portion of the year. That's different for, say, a hire from Florida. A lot of times we lose those folks."

Nieves is a New York City native from Queens. He first experienced Alaska after 9/11, when he came to the state with the U.S. Coast Guard. He quickly fell in love with Alaska and decided it'd be a good place to raise a family.

"There's two types of people who come to Alaska: those who hate it and those who love it," he said.

Despite the large number of applicants, the pool of cadets will not go over 50, the academy's maximum capacity. The troopers can't afford to lower their standards, Nieves said, so low numbers are likely the norm for the long term. Troopers are expected to make volatile decisions in remote areas, he said.

The six Outside students cramming their way through The Last Frontier's cop college were convincing in their intent to start a new life in Alaska, he said.

Official burnout

Lt. Andrew Merrill spent his two years of field training at the troopers' Fairbanks post, which, along with Soldotna and Wasilla, is one of the locations in which new officers gain their bearings.

Troopers receive no specific rural training at the academy. Instead, field training at one of these three locations offers a heavy workload and a variety of calls common throughout the state: burglaries, sexual assaults, drug offenses and the occasional homicide.

With this training in hand, Merrill began working in the rural crimes unit in Fairbanks. He said it's the equivalent of having a Bush post without having to live off the road system. He patrolled villages around Alaska's second-largest city, communities such as Arctic Village, Bettles and Evansville.

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Merrill likes working in the smaller communities and "meeting their unique needs." His decision to work in villages also came from a desire to fly for the state. There's not a lot of opportunity to be a pilot for the state, he said, and this offered up time in the air.

Other troopers, transplants as well as those who claim Alaska as their own, are caught off guard when assigned a rural post, because "each village is different," Merrill said. For some, the work becomes a burden. Unlike urban posts, which have additional shifts of troopers to relieve coworkers, rural posts employ fewer officers who handle a large workload. Keeping troopers on board and enthusiastic about the job, he added, takes a team effort.

"Especially in Western Alaska, it can get overwhelming," Merrill said. "Sometimes there's three to four sexual assaults a week."

If those sex assaults happen to be out in the Bush, the responding trooper spends the night in the village church or school gymnasium. And then another call in another village may come in, and they skip to another town. This can wear on families, troopers say.

"People get here and they think it's awesome," Merrill said, "but they don't want to do nine months of winter without their partner in a town of people they don't know."

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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