The policing-outside-the-townsite issue that the Haines Borough Assembly can’t seem to resolve is a manufactured crisis.
This issue is made of nothing because nothing has changed in local policing except that the number of Alaska State Troopers posted in Haines was reduced from two to one in January 2017.
State troopers are still responding to emergencies outside the Haines townsite, as they always have, and townsite police still respond to actual emergencies outside the townsite when troopers aren’t available, as they always have, dating back for decades.
The “policing issue” is a leftover from the agenda of Heath Scott, who wanted to expand police power even before the trooper position was eliminated. In November 2016, when elimination of one trooper position was still just a rumor, Scott and his roommate, former Haines Borough manager Bill Seward, called for meetings up the highway to discuss expansion of police service.
This is how their story went: With only one state trooper, outlying areas would be in grave danger, outlawry would spiral, and women and children would live in fear. But Heath Scott would rescue us — by expanding the jurisdiction of his department exponentially.
Three years later, Scott’s story has proved false. Crime in the outlying areas didn’t spiral. Crime there is what it’s always been – not much. In fact, when eliminating the second trooper position, Alaska State Troopers said exactly that: The low amount of crime in the outlying areas didn’t justify two trooper positions.
So why is the Haines Borough Assembly still wrapped around the axle on the issue of policing outside the townsite? This is why: It’s in the political interest of the police department and its allies on the assembly to expand the police budget, and one way to do that is to expand police jurisdiction.
To expand police jurisdiction, the borough must change its charter because the charter currently limits police service outside the townsite to dispatching the police there during emergencies. If the borough adopts powers of policing areawide (outside of downtown), the borough also gains the power to use your tax money to provide such service. Then, four votes on the assembly is all it would take to open the floodgates and you would be paying for police joyrides to 42 Mile.
The policing-outside-the-townsite crisis is a Trojan Horse. Made to look like a necessary change in our government’s charter, it’s a camouflaged attempt to funnel more money and authority to a police department that’s already flush but apparently never satisfied.
If assembly members feel any change is necessary — and it’s not clear that any change is necessary — they could adopt assembly member Brenda Josephson’s resolution (drafted initially by borough clerk Alekka Fullerton, an attorney) clarifying that the borough’s areawide power of dispatch includes sending police into the outlying area for legitimate emergencies.
Which is what town police have done since forever.
Then it’s time for the assembly to move on to other, real emergencies – like the decimation of our ferry service, the declined of our salmon runs, and our drastically shrinking borough income.