A Sheriff for the Mat-Su?

PALMER — Asking voters to give the Borough its own police force — and shoulder the corresponding cost — could be one way lawmakers look to address the region’s rising crime rate, officials said this month.

Currently, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough is what’s known as a “second class” or “level two” Borough, a status that restricts lawmakers in the actions they can take without asking permission of voters.

In the past, officials thought that to stand up a police force the Borough must first move to first class status, said District 1 Assemblyman Jim Sykes, whose area includes Lazy Mountain and Butte. But the Borough’s Attorney, Nick Spiropoulos, recently confirmed that is not true.

“It really was kind of a myth — we don’t have to be a first class Borough, it might simplify things, but we don’t have to be a first class Borough,” Sykes said.

Instead, the Assembly could ask voters to OK a police force without changing the Borough’s level, Spiropoulos said in a video shared on the Borough’s website.

“The main way that would happen is a ballot question,” Spiropoulos said in the video interview. “The biggest question there is is what type of police force?”

Spiropoulos said Borough officials could have a variety of options, including a police force that covers the entire area, one that only covers the areas not protected already by the Wasilla and Palmer police or a force that patrols specific service areas within the Borough.

All of those options, however, come with a hefty price tag, said Borough manager John Moosey. His “back of the napkin” estimate for simply standing up such a force — such as buying police cruisers, uniforms and equipment — is at least $40 million, he said.

“It will no doubt come with increased costs,” he said. “That’s always the stumbling block. People want more police security, and I do, too, but are you willing to pay for it?”

The Borough would also have to consider other costs that come with local law enforcement, including creating a criminal code, prosecuting offenders, staffing public defenders and running a criminal holding facility, Spiropoulos said.

Yet another challenge could be simply recruiting potential officers, Moosey said.

“Even if we have a force, where do we get qualified officers?” he asked.

The Borough Assembly is currently set to start taking a closer look at crime in the region at its May meeting. An effort to launch public hearings now on the subject was delayed for a second time early this month.

Sykes, who has made the issue his focus, said he’ll start gathering information and holding listening sessions in his District ahead of the May meeting.

“People say ‘Sykes is trying to get us a Borough police force’ or 'Sykes is trying to move us to a first class Borough,’ and thats not true. I don’t know where any of this will lead,” he said. “I want to leave this place better than when I got here. We did not have this big of problem when I was elected to Assembly in 2013.”

Crime has been on the uptick across the Valley, Palmer Police Chief Lance Ketterling said in the same video interview. In Palmer, specifically, burglaries, assaults, criminal trespassing and thefts are at a five year high, he said. For example, in 2013, 174 thefts were reported in the city. In 2017 there had been 251 at of the time of the interview.

The increase, he said, can be blamed on socio-economic factors, homelessness, drug abuse and mental health issues, as well as the state’s widely unpopular SB91 law.

“All of these are contributing to a pretty complex issue, which is criminal activity,” he said.

A Borough police force is not the only option for increased law enforcement, Borough Mayor Vern Halter said in the video. The area is currently patrolled by Alaska State Troopers, although budget and force cuts have recently reduced their numbers. Increasing Trooper presence is a way to help with crime deterrence without opening a new police force, he said.

Halter said he plans at a scheduled Jan. 2 meeting between Borough lawmakers and the area’s Alaska state house delegation to ask for an increase in the number of Troopers assigned to the region. He said he’ll ask for as many as nine more Troopers, including reopening a Trooper facility in the Trapper Creek area and staffing a new facility for Knik-Fairview.

“You’ve got to have bodies, and you’ve got to have cars and people have to see them, and they’ve got to be be out there working,” he said. “And that’s exactly what we don’t have right now.”

If voters are asked to OK a police force, it likely won’t be in 2018, Sykes said. If the Assembly does not start holding public hearings and collecting information until May, they are unlikely to have a developed solution to present by the time such a measure would need to be placed on the ballot in late summer.