EDITOR’S COLUMN: Don’t be too proud to ask for help

One of the first things you notice upon moving to Alaska is just how few cops there are.

Mostly, this is a good thing.

Outside, cops spend a fair amount of time and taxpayer energy harassing mostly law abiding motorists over mostly mild traffic infractions.

Such is not the case in Alaska. Here, you seldom hear the grumblings of “don’t you guys have better things to do,” from a pulled-over driver fumbling through his glove box for insurance and registration slips.

In Alaska, the cops are so overburdened by a sparsity, they always have better things to do than pull drivers over for picayune offenses, though it’s probably fair to say they get an unintentional assist in moderating drivers’ speeds and insobriety from the many moose liable to meander onto any road at any time.

In the Palmer-Wasilla micropolitan area of about 60,000, only a quarter of the residents are policed by municipal law enforcement. The rest of us are watched over by the Alaska State Troopers, a proud unit about as quintessentially Alaska as you can get.

The stories that long preceded the reality TV shows about them are the stuff of legend, with officers sometimes having to act all at once as cop, lawyer, judge and jailer when dealing with matters in the Bush, getting around by truck, plane, horse, boat, snowmachine and even moose, if they had to.

It’s a bit like the Earp Brothers deciding to make themselves lawmen of the entire New Mexico Territory — if that jurisdiction also included all of Texas. Maybe it’s no coincidence Wyatt Earp disappeared to Alaska after beating the O.K. Corral rap, because the culture of the state troopers is one of, “trust us, we’ve got this. We’re the law around here.”

AST transmissions are scrambled from scanners and their willingness to share information with the media is the tightest I’ve seen. As a result, media coverage of crime in Alaska is the weakest I’ve seen anywhere.

In most of the states and commonwealths Outside, the situation is reversed. Your state police force mostly patrols the highways, though some have an investigative arm. The cities police themselves and in between the cities, there are counties, which in Alaska are called boroughs. The chief law enforcement officer of a county is called a sheriff and his or her underlings are called deputies.

In Alaska’s Mat-Su Borough there is no independent law enforcement, despite the fact it encommpasses a population of more than 103,000 in an area likened in size and shape to West Virginia. Even if the Mat-Su Borough wanted to establish its own police force it couldn’t because it’s classification would have to be changed at the state level first, so for the foreseeable future, we’re going to have to depend on the overstretched, overstressed, tight-lipped and mostly unaccountable state troopers for everything.

That’s fine if you’re a motorist who just wants to be left alone, but it’s not so fine when you need the public’s help in solving a crime.

By now, hopefully, everyone has heard the story of 16-year-old Palmer resident David Grunwald, who disappeared on Sunday night, his Ford Bronco found burned to a crisp some 30 miles away from where he was thought to be.

Days passed with hardly a word from police. Word spread through social media and in traditional media, but that was only thanks to the willingness of David’s mother, Edie, to power through her fear and dread to provide this outlet and others with information and photos.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday passed with no update from the troopers, no press conference to try to give people the information they’d need to help find the boy, whose chances of survival were decreasing by the hour.

On Friday, they sent out a picture of the Bronco, which was obviously a picture of a picture, accompanied with the update that there was nothing new to report.

That afternoon my phone rang.

“Why are there no search parties; we’ve gotta get together a group!” the woman on the other end cried. “That boy is alive or he’s dead and we’re not looking. This is not OK… People need to be looking behind buildings, horse trailers — this kid could be alive this minute!”

Sandy Horn is a 30-year resident of Willow. Back in 1994, her niece, Kathey Horn, went missing near her home in northern Michigan. Sandy Horn recalled how everyone there got together searching for her. Ultimately, it was to no avail, and Kathey’s body was found by mushroom hunters two years later. But encouraged by the community’s efforts to help, the Horn family became advocates, starting the Missing Children’s Network of Michigan.

Sandy could not understand why the Wasilla-Palmer area wasn’t showing the same sort of resolve in trying to find David.

Finally, on Saturday morning, almost six full days since anyone had been known to have seen David, the community came out from behind the wall of social media and showed up in flesh and blood in huge numbers ready to do whatever they could to help.

They were just waiting to be asked, and that’s the saddest part about all of this. Were it not for someone in the select loop of people invited to be part of this search party, who failed to get the memo and put it out on Facebook, they’d still be waiting to be asked.

Even the accidental asking came not from local police, but from a private investigator representing a nonprofit that specializes in cases like these.

“I would think that there might have been some circumstances we might not be aware of that might have made them wait,” said District 12 House Legislator Cathy Tilton, who was on hand at the First Baptist Church on Saturday morning where hundreds showed to offer their help. “Especially with public safety funds reduced, one of the things I’ve been working with other legislators on is more community involvement in things like neighborhood watches to make our communities safer… It’s not ever the legislature’s intent to reduce public safety on the street, but sometimes that happens.”