BURGER AND A BUST

PALMER — A slow-moving stream of people were getting kicked out of the Seether concert Friday. Most of them were drunk. Only one chose to resist.

Alaska State Fair security handed the woman in the green shirt off to Sgt. Shayne La Croix of the Palmer Police Department. The woman tried to wriggle free. La Croix asked that she put her hands behind her back.

He asked again.

And again.

Then, he took a breath and tossed Gretchen Duggar, 23, of Anchorage, into the grass.

“Why are you arresting me?” she protested as La Croix slapped the cuffs on her.

The answer, officer Andy DeVeaux said later, was contained in a charging document — disorderly conduct and, after she admitted to slugging the other woman, assault.

When the Alaska State Fair comes to town, it’s always the busiest time of year for Palmer police. Few, if any, officers are allowed unscheduled leave. The department pulls in extra shifts to staff the fair while still covering the rest of the town. But ask most of the officers and they’ll say they don’t mind. Some might even admit to having fun.

“There’s always something going on. There’s not a lot of down time,” DeVeaux said.

The rest of the revelers pulled out of the Seether concert that night — a little over half a dozen — were ejected, either from the concert or the fair, and asked not to return.

Asked if as many people got rowdy at last week’s Beach Boys concert, DeVeaux laughed, and said, “No.” In fact, Palmer didn’t even provide security for that one. The only concerts police made an effort to have a presence at was Seether and David Archuleta.

“The biggest problem that we had with the Archuleta concert was some of the parents getting upset because they paid $75 per child to get in and they were in the back,” he said.

Well, that and the family they had to ask to move along. Mom decided to park on the Glenn Highway and hear it from there with her kids.         

“First of all, it’s no parking. Second, you’ve got to move on,” DeVeaux said was the advice the woman was given.

DeVeaux and most of the other officers agreed that this year’s fair was relatively tame.

“We haven’t had the fender benders in the parking lot or the yelling matches,” DeVeaux said, as he surveyed the lots packed to overflowing.

But Friday they did have a couple of fights and one gun call. The guy was armed but didn’t know better than to bring his pistol into the fair.

It’s almost a yearly ritual, said Detective Sgt. Kelly Turney, one of the officers who kicked out the man with the gun.

“There’s a couple of things you do at the fair. Have a Husky burger, get a gun call, get into a foot pursuit,” he said.

As he patrolled the camping lots, Turney said the atmosphere was better than he’d expected. The camping lot got rowdy last year and was his biggest concern going into this year’s fair. But fair security put new plans in place and added some personnel. It seemed to work.

As the crowds thinned out approaching midnight, calls became less frequent. It almost seemed like Turney and Officer Dwayne Shelton would wind up the night just chatting with people as they walk the trails or stop by Vagabond Blues to catch a late-night acoustic Beatles cover.

But then someone had to get mad at someone else and Turney and Shelton took off running to Pioneer Plaza — the big open space containing the Alaska SeaLife Center tent.

Apparently two guys had been hitting on three girls who were having none of it. A third guy tried to jump in to be the hero.

“Somebody threw a punch. Nobody knows who. But one of the girls got hit in the back of the head,” Turney said.

The incident ended without charges or a firm understanding of what happened. But that didn’t mean Turney didn’t have to get tough with the shirtless man who tried to play hero. As the man was escorted from the fair he started eyeing one of the guys he’d tried to fight.

“Hey, you mad-dog, hit him again and I’m taking your ass to jail,” Turney shouted.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.