City, state looking to boost drug enforcement

WASILLA — Wasilla city officials are asking Mat-Su Borough taxpayers for $100,000 to help boost drug enforcement in the Valley.

A three-person unit composed of an Alaska State Trooper sergeant and two investigators currently handles high-level drug enforcement. Under a plan being pushed by Wasilla mayor Bert Cottle, the Wasilla and Palmer police departments would each contribute a veteran officer to assist the task force, while using fund contributions and regular budget planning to hire a new patrol officer to replace them. Cottle said he’s also approached Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz about having the municipality possibly contribute an Anchorage police officer to the task force.

“I’m not willing at this point — and I hope you’re not either — to just give up and say we’re just going to build a bunch of treatment centers and a bunch of hospitals to take care of people who are on heroin and things like that,” Cottle told a public budget hearing Thursday evening. “I think we also need to go after the seller.”

The city planning commission gave approval in January to a counseling service and a methadone clinic with in city limits after a months-long period without a methadone clinic in the Mat-Su Borough.

The cost of hiring one officer from Wasilla and one from Palmer is approximately $260,000, Cottle told assembly members at a public hearing on the budget Thursday night. The borough contribution would be contingent on city officials’ ability to find a source for the remaining $160,000, Cottle said.

Cottle said he’s already approached the Mat-Su Health Foundation about obtaining possible funding for an additional officer.

“I’m just asking for your support, and if I can’t come up with the rest of the money, then you keep it,” he said.

High-level drug enforcement is something city departments can’t divert resources to cover, said Wasilla Police Chief Gene Belden.

“What we’re doing is catching the users,” he said. “We’re not being able to catch the people that are actually dealing or supplying the dealers. We don’t have the manpower to do it. That takes long, tedious investigations quite often.”

However, the amount of drugs seized by regular patrol officers is on the rise, Belden said. In 2014, Wasilla patrol officers seized drugs worth about $31,500 (excluding marijuana seizures). In 2015, patrol officers seized $152,000 worth of drugs, Belden said.

Existing Valley drug enforcement is focused on areas outside the cities, Belden said.

“They have enough of their own work, that it’s impossible for them to keep up,” he said. “If we could dedicate an officer from the cities, those cities would work with the DEA and the State Troopers, but their main responsibility would be to the cities.”

Coordination between trooper units and local agencies is a common tactic in the state, said trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters. She cited the Southeast Alaska Cities Against Drugs task force as one example.

“These partnerships are not unusual in the slightest,” she said. “We wouldn’t get anything done if we didn’t cooperate with fellow agencies.”

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.