The Haines Borough Police Department wants $64,000 because it overspent its budget after the fiscal year started last July.
Police chief Heath Scott, at various forums starting late last year, said the department had spent $32,000 more than budgeted since July and was expecting to spend another $32,000 more than budgeted. Thus the $64,000 request that’s before the assembly.
The money would go to additional overtime and standby hours to the borough’s three officers. (Scott, the department’s fourth lawman, is salaried and not eligible for the extra pay.)
Scott made an articulate case for his request, including that police and court cases are up, that the opioid crisis is making additional work for officers, and that upper highway calls are depleting budgeted hours.
But on a week that the borough school district laid off its lone, full-time music teacher despite the testimony and tears of students who love him and his class, I’m reluctant to give the department another $64,000. I would give police $32,000 for costs already incurred because Scott is new to town and new to running the department here.
My thinking on this question has gone back and forth.
As a member of the assembly’s Finance Committee, I recently voted to support paying the $64,000. My support has since softened, for a couple reasons, not excluding the sad turn for our town’s music department.
I’m also skeptical of the need, and I question some of Scott’s arguments.
As far as I can tell, my constituents are divided on this question.
A housewife I know who has raised six kids here since arriving in the early 1980s said of the request: “Are you kidding me? I voted for you to stop this kind of nonsense.” Another mom, a lifelong Alaskan and successful business owner who moved her family here about five years ago, also said no. She said police should spend less time trying to catch drivers going 22 mph in the school zone.
A third mom, who lives outside the police coverage area but oversees a large property in town, said the four-man force should be upped to five because she doesn’t want to pay for sleepy cops. A fisherman who has raised a family here said if the town has a big drug problem, the cops probably need more money.
Hank Jacquot, who was here before dirt, said he didn’t know why more cops were needed. Hank recalled when Bill Battrick and one state trooper covered the whole valley. And Battrick paid for his own gun and uniform, Hank said. (I’m only using Hank’s name here because if I left it out I imagine Hank would call me back and ask why.)
I’ve lived enough to know that voters don’t always know what’s best, but they know what they want. Unfortunately, it’s hard to say what most people want on this question. But no surprise there. Haines often splits 50-50.
The cops are also up against the fact that the citizens aren’t in a particularly generous mood. We’re in the longer part of winter, the economy is tight, legislators are cooking up more cuts and an income tax, and other programs around town have suffered deep reductions. Thirty people showed up Thursday to ask about the cost of making Haines a “bike-friendly community,” an effort pushed by some members of the borough’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee.
But on to chief Scott’s case.
In December, Scott presented to the assembly a stack of paperwork supporting his request. Top among them was a chart showing a jump in criminal cases in the Haines court starting in 2015, following a two-year decline. Starting in 2013, criminal cases went from 71 down to 57 in 2014, and down to 44 in 2015, then up 76 in 2016.
Can some of the increase be attributed to increased staffing? Consider that in late 2014 and early 2015 – when criminal case numbers were at their lowest – the HPD was down to just two officers, Brayton Long and Josh Dryden. In early 2016, two additional officers from Hoonah were hired and by mid-February, Chris Brown was hired. Chief Scott started July 18.
It could be reasonably expected that criminal cases would rebound with the restaffing of the police force in 2016. And that’s exactly what happened.
It’s happened here before. Ten years ago, criminal and civil filings entered at the Haines court had climbed 80 percent during the past three years. The Chilkat Valley News printed a story about it in July 27, 2006 newspaper.
There were 74 criminal court cases in 2005, considerably more than in 2014 and 2015. And in 2006, 75 criminal cases were filed with the court by July.
Was there a crime spree going on? In the newspaper story, Southeast area court administrator Neil Nesheim said not necessarily.
“Typically, when you look at caseload, there’s a correlation between the size and strength of the police force,” Nesheim said.
Interestingly, Greg Goodman, who was then serving as borough police chief, offered the same explanation. He said the department had previously struggled with short-staffing “and some (officers) who have passed through have been less aggressive.”
“My philosophy is that certain things get zero tolerance, and in the past there’s been a problem with getting staff to follow that philosophy,” Goodman said. “We’re now more on the same page and the officers are more willing to follow that philosophy.”
So what caused the spike in cases may be not so much crime wave, as a larger presence and a more aggressive approach to policing by the HBPD.
That police are trying harder isn’t in doubt. The CVN has received enough anecdotal accounts of police pulling over motorists in the past year to believe that’s also factor in the rise in cases.
The following two incidents occurred on sunny afternoons, the first to a petite woman traveling alone, the second to a senior citizen, also traveling alone.
Criss Chaney, a visiting glass artist here for the summer, was pulled over by two officers in Fort Seward who apparently ran her plates and found she was driving a car owned by Paul Nelson. (Carol Tuynman, Nelson’s sister, had loaned the car to Chaney.) David Hedden, a senior citizen and beerfest volunteer, also was pulled over by two officers. Hedden, who doesn’t drink, said he went “from confused to concerned” when the second officer approached “with his hand on his weapon.”
“I was a bit shaken… I felt like I was surrounded by children with real guns,” Hedden said. “Later I visited the interim chief and discussed my experience. He was polite and promised to get right on it,” Hedden said in an email.
I’m not saying that police are harassing people – though to be sure, some of these folks are surprised by such close police attention way up in Haines, Alaska – but it’s safe to say we’re getting nearer to Goodman’s “zero tolerance” approach.
Now let’s look at the opioid crisis. It’s been established that Alaska – like the rest of the country – is in the grips of a surge of heroin, meth, and opioid abuse, for various reasons. Meth is cheap. And heroin and similar drugs are craved by people who become addicted to prescription painkillers.
But are the numbers particularly high in Haines? Or have the same percentage of people in the population who would otherwise be guzzling whiskey discovered better or cheaper highs?
I don’t doubt for a minute that there’s meth, heroin, prescription painkillers and all kinds of nasty drugs in Haines. Those are the drugs du jour, and they’ve found their way here, just as cocaine found its way here in the 1970s and 1980s, and LSD before that.
How much is opioid abuse jacking police business? That’s hard for police to say. Speaking at a recent meeting of the assembly’s finance committee, officer Chris Brown predicated the local crime rate will be going up every year from now on because drugs “bring every other crime on earth.”
Brown said even adding another full-time officer to the borough police isn’t enough to combat the drug problem that’s already here.
At the same meeting, police chief Scott wouldn’t go that far. Asked if drugs were pushing the need for more police time, Scott would only say, “It seems like it has a lot to do with it.”
Drugs are a problem. But in my view, they’re more of a social and medical problem than a police problem. Cops arrest people. They don’t stop people from craving or using drugs.
We’ve seen “Wars on Drugs” in the past, and they generally didn’t work. They absorbed millions, maybe trillions of federal taxpayer dollars and achieved little or nothing besides the militarization of drug dealers. As a society, our thinking on drugs is changing.
City of Haines police chief Zoran Yankovich famously encouraged residents to look for grow lights in neighbors windows in the mid-1980s to see if they were growing marijuana. Two years ago, Alaskans voted to legalize marijuana sales.
This is not to suggest we legalize meth or heroin. But it is to say that policing does not address the drug problem: that people want drugs because they feel the need to take them. Police address the crime problem that begins when we prohibit use of drugs.
The local opioid issue is worth taking a closer look at, but approaching it primarily as a police problem is a mistake. Also, because of medical confidentiality laws, police have said it’s difficult to quantify the extent of the opioid issue here.
Which brings us to the highway calls. The last reason Scott says he needs $64,000 is that the department spends a lot ($18,000 per year) chasing calls up the highway, outside of the police service area. No doubt they do. But some of these calls are ones the state trooper has declined to respond to, but HPD has chased anyway.
The apparent ethos of the department these days is to respond to extra-jurisdictional calls that officers deem urgent. Those recently included a report of a drunk driver at 31 Mile Haines Highway that troopers declined to respond to.
Chief Scott has spoken in heartfelt terms about the need to respond to such calls. “It’s the cost of doing business. We can’t not show up. We are morally obligated,” he told the assembly’s finance committee.
I appreciate Scott’s concern, but our townsite poice department can, in fact, not show up, particularly when troopers choose not to.
People in the townsite have police service because they wanted it and were willing to pay for it through taxes. People living outside the townsite may want police service. When they do, they’ll show up at city hall, willing to pay for it.
Scott also has been unable to say if highway calls have increased over the long term.
The $64,000 question now before us won’t be the end of debates over police staffing and jurisdiction. Expect police to lean on the borough for a fifth officer in upcoming discussions over next year’s borough budget. Expect them to use as a lever the prospect of more highway calls due to the loss of the state trooper job.
Also, expect more requests for raises to officer pay to bridge the department’s apparent pay disparity. Scott makes $95,000 per year before benefits, with a 3.5 percent raise every six months and annual raises of the same amount following a favorable job evaluation. The highest-paid officer makes $65,000, not including overtime, standby time and benefits.
For the record, the police budget has dropped in recent years, but the department also was reduced to four from a five-man squad starting in July 2016. Starting with the most recent, the past five budget totals for the department have been: $520, 270, $512,628, $579,748, $579,739 and $548,870.
Also, if you have an opinion about the $64,000 request, the police budget or related matters, please call me at 766-3775. Thanks.
Posted March 3, 2017