Cop impersonator just trying to help

PALMER — A man driving a white minivan who asked motorists to hug him after he pulled them over while pretending to be a police officer, told Alaska State Troopers he was just trying to help.

According to an AST press statement, Ieremia Unasa, 26, was arrested at a home off of Eklutna Street at 6:33 p.m., Monday on charges of impersonating a police officer.

Troopers alleged he managed to pull over multiple vehicles in his Chrysler Voyager between Wasilla and Palmer.

According to a sworn statement Trooper Kristopher Sperry filed in Unasa’s case, a 29-year-old Palmer man called AST dispatchers Monday to report he’d been pulled over.

“Unasa used hazard lights and hand signals to ‘pull him over,’” Sperry wrote based on the man’s account.

The man pulled over near Gator Glass at Mile 36.5 of the Parks Highway.

“Unasa told him he was speeding and pulled out two driver’s licenses from his pocket, asking if he had seen the people on the licenses,” Sperry wrote.

The man said Unasa identified himself as Officer J.R. with Mat-Su Pre-Trial and said he was working undercover. The Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility is a jail in Palmer.

“Unasa asked him to get out of the vehicle and ‘give him a hug’ multiple times,” Sperry wrote.

The man refused to get out of his vehicle and eventually drove off.

Sperry wrote that similar complaints started coming in to the Wasilla and Palmer police departments at around the same time. And one of the complainants had a license plate number, which Sperry traced back to Unasa’s wife in Palmer.

“Unasa said he pulled over multiple people tonight because the police needed help. Unasa told me he wanted to be a police officer,” Sperry wrote.

He told Sperry he used his cellphone and charger as a stand-in for a police radio to make himself look more official. He claimed to have pulled over a drunk driver, a person smoking marijuana while driving and a 17-year-old girl who was smoking. He also admitted to the ruse of saying he was an undercover cop from the Palmer jail.

“Unasa acknowledged it was not his job to pull people over and realizes that it is against the law to impersonate a police officer,” Sperry wrote.

His bail was set at $10,000 and he will need to find a third party to watch over him before he can be released.

Anchorage media report that police in that city shot Unasa after a downtown traffic rampage in 2004 in which he hit multiple police cars and ran over parking meters. Court records show he faced 26 charges in that case, but pleaded guilty to four: criminal mischief, drunken driving and two counts of assault. Prosecutors filed to revoke his probation in that case after he got hit with charges in Palmer.

As a criminal charge, impersonating a police officer is a rarity in the Valley, But Unasa’s case is the second in four months.

In November 2011, Kenneth Wilson was arrested for trying to pull people over in a Ford Focus he’d equipped with emergency lights. Wilson’s arrest was his third on similar charges. He’d also been arrested in 2001 and 2004 for similar impersonation crimes.

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