AST ridealong: Butte on patrol

Frontiersman

BUTTE — Curtis Vik is getting antsy.

Luis Nieves, his partner for Friday’s patrol of the Knik River Public Use Area, had some errands to run before he could make it out. Vik went out ahead of Nieves to get their four-wheelers ready.

And now he’s hearing gunshots.

“That’s pretty damn close,” Vik says from where he waits near the pavilion on Smith Road. He hops into his Alaska State Troopers minivan and heads into the pavilion’s parking lot, where he finds a group of teenagers. He asks if they’ve been shooting.

“No, not yet,” one says. “We’re going to go way up by the glacier.”

“Have fun and be safe guys,” Vik says and walks back to his van. Inside, he explains the kids had a small-caliber rifle but their story seems legitimate. “I didn’t see any brass around.”

Vik and Nieves, both AST investigators, were out Friday night to patrol the Butte area. In 2006, the Department of Natural Resources created the Knik River Public Use Area, which encompasses 260,000 acres of streams, rivers and ATV trails. So far, DNR has produced a draft of a use plan, public comments on which were due last week. The next step is to review those comments, tweak the plan and send it to the department’s commissioner, who will produce a final plan.

As part of the legislation creating the public use area, the DNR set aside $180,000 to pay for overtime hours for Alaska State Troopers to patrol the area. Last year, the first year the patrols were active, Vik did, by his count, about 15 to 20 of these patrols. Friday was his third of this year.

Vik said that, so far, he’s received good feedback.

“The community has been very, very positive about our patrols out there,” he said.

An April 24 Mat-Su Borough Assembly meeting where the topic came up bore out his assessment. A number of off-road-vehicle enthusiasts, worried over the effects of a resolution the Borough was considering, testified the troopers were having a noticeable impact in the area, long known for errant gunfire and burning cars.

“The state troopers have made a difference,” Butte resident Kenny Barber said.

Most of what Vik was looking for Friday was unsafe shooting and folks driving vehicles where they shouldn’t be — like down the center of a stream. Occasionally he’ll pick up a drunk driver on an ATV or in a truck. Since it’s illegal to shoot on or across a motorway, Vik said a big portion of the area is a no-gunfire zone.

“You look down, you see ATV trails, that’s a vehicle way,” he said.

Friday started out with a bang for Nieves and Vik. They’d planned to go out at 6 p.m. but were called out to a nearby bar fight. By 9 p.m. they were on their ATVs and had made it to the pavilion’s parking lot, where they rolled up on a blue Chevrolet pickup with three teenage boys inside.

Soon, Nieves had found three full 18-packs of Natural Ice beer behind the pickup’s bench seat. A fourth materialized from another car and four kids were set to work pouring can after can into the gravel.

“Sorry to break up your party, but those are the rules,” Nieves tells the teens. “We’re giving you a break; we’re not going to charge you.”

Vik ran a field sobriety test on the truck’s driver — he passed — and called in the kids’ names for a standard check for outstanding warrants. The teen in the middle seat had a warrant for his arrest out of Alabama serious enough that Alabama could ask for him back.

At some point the Butte Fire Department stopped by with a tip that some kids were planning to torch a car down by the river. Between that and the gunfire, Vik and Nieves figured it better they patrol the area than run the kid to jail and summoned another trooper to escort the teen.

“Usually I can make it out of the parking lot,” Vik joked, waiting for the trooper to arrive.

Finally out on the river, Vik and Nieves stopped by parties to make sure everyone was behaving. They were.

They warned the driver of a silver Dodge Ram truck not to spin doughnuts so close to Jim Creek. If he’d done it in the creek, Vik said, he would’ve broken a law.

Nothing ever came of the tip about the car set to be burned.

At one camp a kid in a white shirt came out to show troopers where to find a trail through the woods. In the dark, with their helmets on, the two apparently didn’t quite look like cops.

“Watch out for the troopers,” the kid said, sending Vik and Nieves on their way.

Vik rolled by a half-dozen abandoned trucks and SUVs. A former property crimes investigator, Vik is trying to identify the vehicles, looking for vehicle identification numbers and seeing if they come up stolen.

Even if they don’t, he said it’s at least a littering infraction and, if he gets the Department of Environmental Conservation involved it could mean a court case for allowing the vehicles’ various oils and fluids to drain into the sand.

“This thing here’s a Ford pickup,” Vik says, rolling up on a burned-out husk. “There might be some hidden VINs on it. I just haven’t been able to find them yet.”

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