May 2001
Alaska's Reserves Brave the Elements
(Reserve Reports column)
by
Richard B. Weinblatt
(pp. 24-25)
"The chill factor makes it hard," acknowledged Kotzebue Police Chief Greg Russell. Like many law enforcement executives, Chief Russell has had to come up with creative solutions to policing problems- volunteer personnel were the answer. He has ten full-time officers, ten corrections officers, and three reserves who serve a population of 3,600 located 33 miles north of the Artic Circle on the Western Coast of Alaska. The only assistance that the officers of remotely located Kotzebue have are the Alaska State Troopers, whose 240 commissioned personnel are spread thin over a whopping 586,412 square miles. Reserve officers in Kotzebue make up an additional uniformed presence that would not otherwise be there.
"With our unique law enforcement situation here in Kotzebue, the reserves have a larger impact," said Russell, whose agency fields around 7,000 calls for service a year.
Also utilizing reserves as part of the delivery of law enforcement services in Alaska is the Wasilla Police Department located 43 miles north of Anchorage. Chief Charlie Fannon, a former police chief in Haines, AK, and ex-deputy sheriff in Idaho, is a huge proponent of the reserve concept and has a very active program with nine reserves currently supporting 17 full-time Wasilla police officers.
"It costs us $69,000 a year in wages and benefits for a full-time officer. From May 1999 to May 2000, the Wasilla reserves donated 3,361 total hours. That's over $100,000 in police manpower on the city's streets," said Fannon. The reserves must serve 12 hours a month on the road and are active on foot patrol, bike patrol, handicapped parking patrol and riding as a second officer with full-time officers.
Russell said that his reserves provide vital backup to his agency, which has only two or three full-time officers out at peak times. Kotzebue officers patrol the city, which encompasses 17,000 square acres in four wheelers and snow machines. The department houses the largest contract jail site in Alaska: a 38,000 squre mile jail catchment area and 1,189 prisoners.
Kotzebue does not have a juvenile detention facility and officers have been previously unable to hold juveniles for offenses. Russell enlisted the reserves and paid them $15 an hour to sit with the juveniles overnight. "When they realized that they would be held overnight so that we could pull them out of the village the next day for arraignment, a lot of the problems stopped," said Russell.
Fannon belives that the Wasilla reserve officers are his department's ambassadors to the community. The reserves' full-time occupations bring them into contact with civilians in non-adversarial conditions in a way that full-time officers do not.
Training
Alaska's Police Standards Council regulates minimum training for the full-time law enforcement officers in the state. Any training for reserve police personnel is left up to the local police department, causing liability issues that force some departments to shy away from using reserve officers.
Kotzebue's Russell has a three phase training program in place that is built around information out of the state's police certification manual. The training starts with qualifying at the range, then goes to wearing a uniform on patrol with a full-time officer and finally having police powers while on duty. Russell said all officers, reserve and full-time, shoot quarterly and qualify twice per annum no matter what the weather conditions.
In addition to the 12 road hours, reserves in Wasilla attend a two hour advanced training session every Thursday night. Fannon sponsors reserve officers interested in furthering their training and he has sent them out of the city for high speed pursuit driving, control tactics, pepper spray and ASP expandable baton sessions.
Even more impressive is the basic training philosophy that Fannon has. He sends the reserves to the full 21-week academy regiment. "It's quite a committment, but for someone who wants to get into the field, it's a good investment," said Fannon. Reserves can commute daily to the Anchorage Police Academy or stay at the residential Alaska State Trooper Academy in Sitka, AK.
"After seeing them complete the training, which is quite a committment, and ride on patrol, they become a known quantity. This is a lot better than word of mouth," observed Fannon who hired two former reserves in January and said others have been picked up by Cordova Police, Anchorage Police, and Ted Stevens International Airport Police in Anchorage.
Fannon said it is hard to hire full-time officers. In Alaska, only 2.5 are hired for every 100 full-time position applicants and Anchorage Police are even more selective at just 1.5 per 100. Reserve officers who have received police academy training provide a valuable pool from which chiefs can recruit.
Fannon sees reserve service as a way for police administrators to weed out potential problem officers. "I hate to sound cold and heartless, but we're talking about people who can use deadly force and are a liability to the city in the lawsuit happy society we live in." said Fannon. "That being said, I'll stack up the quality of officers in the Wasilla reserve program with any I've seen elsewhere. They are the best."
For more information contact the Kotzebue Police Department at http://kotzpdweb.tripod.com/index.html
Richard B. Weinblatt, a former full-time officer, is the chairman of the Public Services Department at South Piedmont Community College in Polkton and Monroe, NC.
[email protected]