CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

MAT-SU — The differences between the communities of Palmer and Wasilla are legion, but are those differences apparent in the cities’ crime statistics?

Turns out they are.

One example is theft. In 2009, Wasilla had 461 calls for thefts and 234 for shoplifting. Palmer doesn’t break out shoplifting in its statistics and still saw only 228 theft calls last year.

Why is that? Wasilla’s interim police chief, Larry Dickerson, said the answer should be clear to anyone who’s ever spent time at the corner of Palmer-Wasilla and Parks highways.

“We have a lot of theft because of the retail base that we have here,” he said.

But non-business-related thefts went up as well. Still, Dickerson said, so did most every other statistic at around 2005. That points to the growth of the city, he said, adding that while chasing down a shoplifter might not seem paramount right off, those kinds of calls are important.

“You’ve got people that use drugs and to get those drugs they do car prowls and they shoplift,” he said.

Another point of difference comes in the category of drug crimes. Palmer police saw drug crimes reduce by a third — from 97 down to 59 — and stay that low starting in 2005. Detective Sgt. Kelly Turney with PPD said that coincides roughly with the Valley’s methamphetamine boom and the ensuing crackdown on meth cooks.

But, he pointed out, the stats are starting to inch back up — from a low of 47 in 2008, that number went up to 64 in 2009.

“We’re seeing more of an increase not only in heroin (use), but also in prescription medications,” he said.

But in Wasilla it’s a much different picture. Drug cases dipped very slightly from 2005 to 2006 but have been rising ever since. There were 36 drug cases in 2006, but 129 in 2009.

Dickerson didn’t have a firm answer for why that was. He’s only been in the chief’s seat since October, but based on his experience heading up police agencies in the Lower 48, his educated guess would be that population growth coupled with the Parks Highway likely account for a lot of that rise.

A lot of drug cases, he said, begin as traffic stops.

“Based on what I’ve seen elsewhere, I would have to say it would probably be based on more people making traffic stops,” he said.

One line missing from both sets of statistics — murder —actually says a lot about both communities. Neither department has handled a homicide investigation in the past five years. Dickerson checked with a sergeant to make sure that was the case.

“The last true homicide was back in ’99, which is good,” Dickerson said.

Some of the statistics have so few entries it’s almost hard to draw a conclusion. A good example would be Palmer’s burglary rate. Turney said the department’s 50 burglary calls in 2009 might seem like a big jump, considering there were 37 in 2008.

“The spike in burglaries — that can literally be one person. And in 2009 that one person was Rueben Fielder,” he said.

Fielder committed more than 20 burglaries in the Palmer area, mostly breaking into businesses after they’d closed. Turney arrested Filelder about a year ago. He is now serving a three-and-a-half-year prison term. Burglaries are tough cases to solve. Nationally, Turney said, an average of 20 percent of burglaries cases are “cleared.” Having one person commit so many, in some ways, actually improves Palmer’s stats.

“Right there we’ve cleared half of them,” he said.

A 2007 spike in criminal mischief — a charge usually leveled against suspects who do property damage — likely had a similar cause.

“I don’t know specifically, but that could be a couple of kids going around throwing rocks through car windows,” he said.

And some statistics, far from painting a picture that a town is more crime-ridden, likely show that officers have enough breathing room between responding to calls that they can do more proactive police work.

A spike in warrant arrests — such as when Palmer police made 318 in 2006 as opposed to 250 in 2005, or in Wasilla between 2006 and 2007 when that number jumped from 161 to 214 — might mean officers had more time to hunt people down.

Conversely, a dip in the rate of runaway children probably means officers were more often able to find the runaways and bring them back before the end of that day’s shift.

When a case like that is cleared in the course of one shift, Turney said, it doesn’t contribute to the statistics.

“A lot of this, when it comes to things like that, is how well your officers know your community and how well your community knows your officers,” Turney said.

Similarly, when in 2007 all Palmer officers received basic emergency medical training, the department’s rate of medical calls doubled.

In the broadest possible terms, what do the stats show?

“It’s a steady call load for the officers,” Turney said. “The amount of calls is going up slowly every year.”