Agencies team up to keep holiday quiet

MAT-SU — Reports from most Valley agencies seem to be uniform — Memorial Day weekend was relatively quiet for law enforcement.

“Overall, it was a pretty quiet weekend; had nothing really, you know, serious going on,” Palmer Police Chief George Boatright said.

“Nothing significant to report,” added Lt. Tory Oleck with the Alaska Wildlife Troopers.

Even in the Knik Public Use Area, a weekend destination whose lawlessness, at least to hear neighboring homeowners tell it, is hard to match, there wasn’t much going on, Oleck said. But there were four troopers who went out there five or six times over the weekend to keep an eye on things.

“I don’t think there was any more than usual traffic,” said officer Jason Holmgren in Houston. “There might have been a little bit more just because of the high gas prices and I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how they didn’t want to go very far.”

But the lack of any major activity is not to say police officers weren’t busy.

Memorial Day weekend saw the kickoff of a new traffic enforcement team that patrolled Friday in Palmer, Saturday in Wasilla and Monday in Houston.

Over three days that team, composed of officers from Houston, Palmer, Wasilla and the state’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement program, made a total of 343 stops, wrote 281 citations, made three DUI arrests, arrested two people on outstanding warrants, busted six people for driving on a canceled, revoked or suspended license and nabbed two for drug offenses.

“I’m very encouraged. It met all of my expectations. We’re going to try two more activations,” said Sgt. Kelly Swihart of the Wasilla Police Department, who put the team together. “Depending on how those turn out and the feedback we get from the public, I hope we’ll be able to do this at least quarterly or more as needed.”

The traffic enforcement team is made up of officers pulling overtime shifts outside of their normal work hours. Those overtime hours are paid for through the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s Click it or Ticket campaign.

Swihart said his hope is that eventually the team will be a tool agencies can use to address specific problems.

If officers are seeing a particular intersection as a problem or are noting a worrisome traffic trend, they could put in a request to activate the team. That activation could, if this weekend was any indication, bring upward of 11 additional personnel, including uniformed municipal cops, commercial vehicle employees and folks from Wasilla’s reserve program.

A side effect of tamping down on trouble spots is that officers who don’t often get to see each other get to work side-by-side, Holmgren said.

“It was kind of fun that way and to build that camaraderie, which is already tight,” Holmgren said. “It just makes it tighter.”

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