Love crimes

WASILLA — The Wasilla Police Department used Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to help try to inform the public achieved surprising results.

The viral post from WPD’s Facebook page featured decorative hearts around photos of people with active warrants and was commented on more than 600 times and shared 4,500 times. WPD Public Information Officer Amanda Graham said that she had not posted a ‘Warrant Wednesday’ in quite some time and that a similar post had performed well last Valentine’s Day. Graham decided to combine the two and got an incredible amount of response, most of which was humorous but said that the impact of the visibility of WPD was the goal.

“I think more of what posts like that do for a department on the social media level and the community policing level is that they get your page more visible,” said Graham. When something that comes out that’s more important than these people that have warrants, it’ll reach more of the right people. It’s always a good thing to have a little more of that positive social media presence.”

While Graham did not attribute any warrant arrests to the Valentine’s Day post, some featured in the photos were very quickly brought to Mat-Su Pretrial. On Feb. 16, Alaska State Troopers arrested 29-year-old Garret Bishop of Wasilla, who was featured in one of the heart photos, on charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct along with his felony warrants for violating conditions of release and misconduct involving weapons in the fourth degree. Just two days after his photo was shared thousands of times, Bishop was held at Mat-Su Pretrial on $30,500 cash bail.

“Last year we did the Valentine’s Day post with a poem and a picture of the handcuffs but that one performed pretty well so I thought I should try to piggyback off that because I noticed that some people were still sharing that post as it popped back up on the timeline,” said Graham.

Prior to the post, WPD forwarded charges following a theft of flowers and a stuffed bear from Carrs. On Feb. 13, WPD forwarded charges on Makinley Velasquez following the incident.

“That was pretty on the nose for the date. It’s not usually something that we see this time of year. There isn’t a bump in people stealing flowers and teddy bears,” said Graham.

The Wasilla Police Department’s new headquarters has nearly completed construction and Graham expects the move from their current location to the new building to happen in April.