I have been honored to be chief of the Anchorage Police Department for the past six months. Since I took over, we have focused on how to best deploy our new resources to ensure we have a visible and proactive police force focused on curbing violent and property crimes in our city. As 2017 comes to a close and we move into 2018, I want to highlight a few of our significant accomplishments this year.
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Over the past two years, we have run five consecutive academies, and are starting the sixth on Monday. This upcoming academy will have 36 recruits — the largest our department has ever seen. We are just now starting to reap the benefits of these academies as our newest officers are hitting the streets as solo cops. As we grow, my command staff and I are constantly evaluating how to best allocate your officers so we have the most impact on crime in Anchorage and ensure we are quickly responding to your calls for service. This includes looking at patrol shift sizes and configurations, specialty unit assignments like the Traffic Unit or the Community Policing Team, the appropriate size for detective units, and evaluating patrol area boundaries to make sure they give officers the best opportunities for community outreach.
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This year we have made some significant changes within the department. We have realigned the CAP and VICE teams under one command structure and focused them on drug investigations. We believe most of the violent crime occurring in Anchorage has a drug nexus. If we can suppress drug crime, we believe it is likely to have an impact on violent crime. We are also working more closely than ever before with our state and federal partners in this effort.
We also created an entirely new Investigative Support Unit (ISU), which consists of eight patrol officers and a supervisor who are tasked with supporting all other units of the department. They have the capability to assist detectives locate suspects, conduct specialty details, or provide extra visibility in any area patrol has identified that needs a little extra attention. Just recently, ISU partnered with a local Fred Meyer for an undercover assignment to reduce theft. In just one day, they made multiple arrests and hopefully sent a message that thefts will not be accepted here in town.
As we concentrate internally on specific crime areas, we also know the community wants to see officers in their neighborhoods, on the street, and responding quickly to their calls. With more and more officers completing field training, we have focused on strengthening our patrol division to have more first responders available for calls. We also want officers to have the time to slow down, talk to residents, be consistently assigned to their patrol beats in order to become familiar faces to residents and businesses, and become more active in their community. I've always said it's a great problem to have when your community just wants to see officers more.
Finally, I want to thank Anchorage. This is truly a great place to be a police officer, and a very supportive community to serve. With more than 48,000 people subscribed to Nixle, the community has helped us to find missing people, locate vehicles or people of interest, or even solve crimes. Everywhere I go, residents thank me for the work our employees do every day, but I want to make sure Anchorage residents know how much we appreciate them in return. Anchorage has a high standard for its police officers, and we are working incredibly hard to live up to the standard our community has set for us, each and every day.
Justin Doll has been chief of the Anchorage Police Department since July 2017, and has served with APD for 21 years. He was raised in Spenard, graduated from West High and has bachelor's and master's degrees from UAA.
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