New graduates from the Alaska Department of Public Safety academy reduce state trooper vacancy rate

The Alaska Department of Public Safety announced 17 new graduates from its basic training academy bound for police departments, wildlife and state trooper posts, airport police and fire stations and village public safety officer roles across the state.

Roughly one third of the graduates, or six trainees, are headed to the Alaska State Troopers, in wildlife or state trooper roles. The state law enforcement agency has struggled with vacancies in recent years, which leaders have said has limited its ability to address time-sensitive criminal investigations.

“We’re getting better. The vacancies are certainly higher than we would like them to be now, which I think is the case, not only across Alaska, but across the country. We would like to see those vacancies a lot lower than they are,” said Austin McDaniel, the department’s director of communications.

With the new recruits, there are currently 55 commissioned officer vacancies out of 411 funded positions, about a 13 percent vacancy rate, which McDaniel said is an improvement for the department.

“It’s very promising to see our vacancies in the fifties, that’s a great place. We’ve seen them in the upper seventies and even low eighties here over the last five years,” he said.

McDaniel said the vacancies are not currently impacting the state troopers responsiveness to the public and calls for service. But he said certain operations can be limited, depending on the department and region.

“One of the big impacts we’ll see is less, maybe, proactive policing, less troopers out looking for crime, especially public impact crime that might be occurring, less traffic enforcement, things like that,” he said. “We’ll still be able to, and still do today, respond to calls for service from the public, whether it’s a 911 call or a nonemergency call.”

McDaniel said while some vacancies are standard due to turnover and the length of hiring and training times, the department is continuing to work on recruitment, hiring and training.

At the law enforcement training academy, based in Sitka, new recruits completed 17 weeks and 1,000 hours of basic law enforcement training, including classroom and hands-on training. Trainees were instructed in use of force and de-esclation tactics, physical fitness, driving, and firearms, as well as exposed to pepper spray and shot by a Taser. Recruits were recognized at a Nov. 14 graduation ceremony, where some also received awards for physical fitness, firearm use, driving and overall performance as valedictorian.

Some graduates are headed to local police departments in Kodiak, Kotzebue, Petersburg, Sitka and Juneau, as well as to the Anchorage Airport Police and Fire unit. One recruit will go to a village public safety officer post with the Association of Village Council Presidents in Western Alaska.

“We are honored to welcome these new officers into Alaska law enforcement,” said James Cockrell, the commissioner for the Alaska Department of Public Safety in a prepared statement. “They should be proud of all the hard work they put in during the rigorous training at the academy. I am confident they will uphold the highest standards of professionalism and integrity while they serve the people of our great state.”

McDaniel explained new recruits are hired through respective departments, and after completing basic training they will return and continue several weeks of field training and evaluation, in a typical one year probationary period.

For state troopers, McDaniel said recruits first go through a several week hiring process. “That includes a very intensive background check, a polygraph examination, a psychological examination, an oral board interview, a medical evaluation, and a physical fitness test. They have to complete all of those steps, and then they’re offered a hire date,” he said.

The Department of Public Safety began a new program last year for early hires to begin four to six weeks of training before the academy, McDaniel said, doing ride-alongs, working on physical fitness and learning about the department. “They’re able to go through and really familiarize themselves with the department, and recruits that participate in that have an exponentially higher likelihood of completing the training academy,” he said.

This year, about one quarter of recruits, or six trainees, did not complete the academy training program, he said, for a variety of reasons. “It’s a challenging profession, especially in a place like Alaska,” he said. “It’s not a job everyone can do.”

Upon graduation, state trooper graduates continue to their first duty assignments in Fairbanks, Soldotna or the Matanuska-Susitna Valley Borough, for two years. “We do our training in those communities because of the volume of calls we get there. New troopers are able to get exposure to a lot of different things that they can then bring on to other areas of their career,” McDaniel said. From there, Troopers can elect to transfer to other communities around the state.

Average pay for a new trooper with no experience in their first full year is $127,000, McDaniel said. The state offers a base pay of $93,000 per year, plus various incentives such as bonuses for certain shifts and rural posts, as well as offers for subsidized housing, retirement benefits, moving expenses and a patrol vehicle.