Law enforcement academic again for Wood

Frontiersman

WASILLA — If growth can be said to be the main issue facing Wasilla, then Greg Wood has experience that will be beneficial to his role as second-in-command of the Wasilla Police Department.

Wood began his law enforcement career in Valdez in the mid-1970s. The Alaska pipeline was coming through and brought with it scores of construction workers. Those workers, in turn, brought big-city problems to what was once a small Alaska fishing community.

Organized crime, drugs and prostitution came to Valdez, Wood said, and it was up to the police to keep a lid on things.

“Our criminal activity just skyrocketed down there,” he said.

Then, after things settled down, he was still with the department in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound. The effort to clean up the sound ushered in a whole new population boom.

“I’ve been through two booms of explosive growth and business,” Wood said, and it has “exposed me to a larger variety of law enforcement activities.”

But that’s not to say Wood has all the experience he needs to be Wasilla’s deputy chief. In fact, Wood said he’s going to go through the police academy again, spending two weeks at the state’s academy in Sitka and finishing up the 400-hour training at the Anchorage Police Department’s academy in Anchorage.

He’ll need the refresher, he said, because of how long he’s been out of the game. He retired from Valdez’s force in 1996 and went to work for a private security company.

“I’ve been gone for 11 years and probably the biggest difference is that the technology has changed,” Wood said.

That’s particularly true in Wasilla where, in just the past few years, the department has gone to digital police dispatch and outfitted its patrol cars with mobile computers, to say nothing of how crime-fighting technology has changed since 1996.

Wood said he’s glad to be back in the game, especially working for Wasilla, which he described as a dedicated, professional police force with a dynamic leader in Chief Angella Long.

It’s also been nice to work in a place like Wasilla, he said. Valdez had a department that was largely on its own with the only other nearby agency being a one-man Alaska State Troopers post.

Wasilla, by contract, can count on backup from Palmer police, Houston police, troopers and even, responding to a big emergency, Anchorage police.

“That’s nice,” he said of that collaboration. Troopers would come to Valdez if a big case required more hands on deck but, “Here, it’s more of a daily relationship.”

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