Law enforcement, community collaborate to reduce theft crimes

WASILLA — With a growing online community of victims and neighbors concerned about break-ins and burglaries, state and local officials convened a meeting Friday to talk about what they’re doing and what’s still to be done.

“I have to thank a couple of thieves for the group because they’re what made it happen,” Vicki Wallner said of her popular Facebook groups Stop Valley Thieves and Mat Valley Crime Watch.

Wallner is wife of an Alaska State Troopers sergeant. She said that thieves in her area prompted her to start the Facebook groups, including one driving around her neighborhood in a truck “doing snatch and grabs.” She said she’s not sure that the popularity of the group — 3,100 members and growing — is a result of an increasing rate of crime.

“It hasn’t changed a lot, it hasn’t grown a lot, it’s just that now we’re aware of it,” she said.

Capt. Hans Brinke with the Alaska State Troopers said he didn’t have statistics for whether crime had actually increased. He said that, anecdotally, he thinks he perceives an increase.

But, he said, he’s noticed something else that has prompted him to try something new in the department — residents are upset.

So, with the state handing down more money to fund positions in the Valley, Brinke said he has enough flexibility to create a four-man property crime unit.

In the past, two troopers had been assigned to do burglary work one day a week each. This new unit, though, would be responsible for property crimes five days a week. The new burglary unit begins work the first of the year and Brinke has already assembled the team.

“The way these guys talk and the people that they know in the Valley, you are going to see a lot of results from these guys,” he said.

Other changes that might be coming? Rep. Mark Neuman said he sees a need for something like a database. A lot of stolen property is sold to make money for drugs. Some of that property ends up in local pawnshops.

Law enforcement in the room was universally positive in its assessment of those pawnshops. Valley proprietors seem, as a rule, to be cooperative with law enforcement, they said.

But the infrastructure isn’t there. Brinke said pawnbrokers are required to keep records and make those records available to law enforcement, but they aren’t transmitted to law enforcement or compiled. Which, in practice, often means that cops looking for hot goods have to go shop to shop checking the ledgers.

Nor, Neuman pointed out, does it go the other way. There is no law enforcement database that pawnbrokers to access to check if something they’re about to buy has been reported stolen.

Brinke said such a database would be helpful, but it’s not the sort of thing that can be created overnight.

“We’ve got to think about how we’re going to do this,” he said.

The state needs to make sure it’s not created in such a way that it’s easily abused. It would be a simple thing, he pointed out, for a criminal with access to such a database to show up at a pawnshop pretending to be a victim and trying to convince the broker to hand it over.

Some of the more frustrated remarks from members of the public were directed not at troopers investigating the cases, but at the district attorneys prosecuting them.

“The victims are being stomped on and we have no rights,” one woman said.

But Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak said members of the public should attend a bail hearing if they think district attorneys aren’t in courts working to keep thieves locked up.

“There is a lot of fighting. There’s a lot of prosecuting. There’s a lot of indicting. There’s a lot of investigating,” he said.

His office opens 40 new felony cases through grand jury proceedings each week. But, he said, a lot of his work is proscribed by the Legislature.

There are moves in Juneau, he said, to change laws to make property crime laws less severe. Currently, a theft of $500 or more is a felony. One law up for debate would push that to $1,000. There’s another law that would make possession of small amounts of heroin and methamphetamines a misdemeanor.

“If you guys are concerned about that you’ve got to talk to your legislators,” Kalytiak said.

One of his assistant district attorneys took to the podium from his seat in the audience to point out that even when a theft is prosecuted as a felony, the state has set certain ranges for sentences that prosecutors have to stick to. How much time a defendant gets in jail is largely out of prosecutors’ hands.

But everyone at the table seemed to agree the public could help with the law enforcement mission.

Kalytiak urged more people to come to court. Victims who testify at trials or at sentencing hearings can have an impact.

Brinke pointed out that the public could help in reducing false alarms. Burglar alarms sent his guys scrambling 1,300 times last year.

“Nineteen of those alarms that came in last year were valid alarms,” Brinke said.

Most of all, he said, the public can play a role in reporting what they see to troopers.

“You guys are 1,000 eyes out there,” he said.

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