Anchorage Daily News

WASILLA -- Jentry Crain comes off as a nice guy, unassuming and polite, a gentleman with an easy smile who raves about his wife's nursing school grades and cuts his own hair.

Then Crain laces up knee-high black leather boots, climbs on a souped-up police model Harley-Davidson Dyna Defender and roars into the traffic droning past Fred Meyer on the Parks Highway.

A former U.S. Army bomb disposal expert who last year spent six months detonating explosives in Iraq, officer Crain is the Wasilla Police Department's lone motorcycle patrol officer, and he can be one of the most imposing things on the road in this 16-square-mile city of 6,100.

Crain doesn't mind.

"If I do get the reputation as the most hated guy in town, I'll gladly accept that if it means a few more people are alive," he said.

Since the motorcycle patrol started about a year ago, the accident rate has dropped by two-thirds, officials say. Crain makes 15 to 20 traffic stops a day and writes about 200 citations a month. Ninety percent of the revenue goes back to the city.

Wasilla last year opted for a motorcycle cop to reduce the number of wrecks in a city where parking lot after parking lot spews traffic directly onto the Parks Highway. The city counted more than 600 accidents in 2003, and there have only been more driveways, businesses and subdivisions built since then. The intersection of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla Highway -- already one of the busiest in the Valley -- recently gained a Carl's Jr. and an A&W restaurant as well as a PetZoo store.

Law enforcement officials say motorcycles, with their speed and maneuverability, are huge assets in reducing traffic problems. The Alaska State Troopers use two leased Harleys in Palmer as part of their patrols for drunken drivers.

Drivers often don't see Crain until it's too late. He said one woman passed him on the Parks Highway doing 60 mph through Wasilla, then told him she didn't even know he was there.

A Boston Red Sox fan driving a blue Ford Taurus didn't see Crain sitting near the downtown fire station. That's probably why he drove through the stop sign at Nelson Avenue and Lucille Street without coming to a full stop.

Not five minutes after Crain wrote the ticket and returned to his spot -- "his whole point was, 'I slowed down.' " -- the officer bounced down off the curb in search of a driver clocked at 48 mph in a 35 mph zone.

Traffic accidents beat out any other call in the city, said Wasilla Police Chief Don Savage.

"It's just sky-high compared with all our other calls for service," he said.

The city earmarked $9,000 of a federal highway safety grant to buy a motorcycle, and it got lucky when House of Harley-Davidson in Anchorage had a spare police Harley and was willing to sell it to Wasilla at that relatively low price.

"We couldn't have done it without them," Savage said.

The business ordered the bike for the Anchorage Police Department, but the model came without the anti-lock brakes that APD wanted, said Joe Matteson, sales manager at House of Harley.

The shop's mechanics modified the bike, installing all Screaming Eagle parts, including a 95-cubic-inch engine, up from 88 cubic inches. The shop also installed 22 different lights to ensure the bike would be visible.

That doesn't mean it's not stealthy.

"People aren't used to seeing police motorcycles in Alaska," Matteson said. "They're quick. Boom, they get up on step like that, they get right behind a person."

Wasilla bought the bike last spring. Crain started in May. He rides as long as the roads remain clear of ice. He switches to a car in heavy rain.

He had never ridden a motorcycle before taking the job, just dirt bikes and snowmachines.

Born and raised in Texas, Crain started his law enforcement career as a backcountry ranger in the White Mountain National Forest of Colorado. He moved on to police work in Craig, Colo., then spent four years in the Army, stationed at Fort Richardson.

He left the military in September 2001, two days before the terrorist attacks. The next year, he joined the Wasilla police reserves in hopes of getting a full-time job, then worked a series of security jobs to make ends meet.

From September 2003 until February 2004, he worked as a civilian contractor in the area of Najaf, Iraq. It paid well. Detonating bombs in the military is a voluntary duty. Few sign up for it.

One of the first sights Crain remembers from that trip was arriving at one of Odai Hussein's palaces. Human skeletal remains lay scattered in a cage of lions, leftovers from a ritual of abducting women, along with their husbands or lovers, then offering freedom to any man who could pluck a bell from a lion's neck, he recalled. The animals hadn't eaten for days. None of the men survived.

Crain's team detonated 200 tons of ordnance a day and responded to reports of any roadside bombs or other explosive devices in the area.

He got the full-time motorcycle patrol job late last spring.

The Harley's alternator conked out last week, so Crain reverted to his patrol car for a few days. He missed his motorcycle.

"I can actually get places and catch up with people -- actually do my job," he said.

Reporter Zaz Hollander can be reached at the Daily News Wasilla office at zhollander@adn.com or 352-6711.