‘Nowhere feels safe anymore’: Experts discuss Valley crime

PALMER — About 50 people filed into the Palmer Senior Center Saturday afternoon, skipping out on the sunshine to talk about crime.

Alaska State Troopers Brian Barlow and Tom Dunn, Palmer Police Chief Lance Ketterling, District Attorney Roman Kalytiak, Neighborhood Watch Coordinator Belinda Bohannon and Rep. DeLena Johnson formed a panel to discuss a myriad of issues that have come to one conclusion: crime is increasing.

“It’s kind of a good place to be a criminal right now,” said Kalytiak.

Kalytiak has served as the District Attorney in Palmer since 1999 and as a prosecutor for 31 years. He was the third member of the panel to disseminate his take on what is causing crime. Kalytiak followed AST B Detachment Patrol Attendant Tom Dunn and Deputy Director for the Division of the AST Brian Barlow. Kalytiak opened his statements by reading from a letter he had been sent following the trial of Erick Almandinger.

“The atrocities that occur on a daily basis are horrifically disturbing,” Kalytiak read. “There needs to be a profound change in our court system, thereby making criminals and wannabe criminals the ones fearing as a result of their actions. Our state is crawling with people who are drug addicted a little or no consequence to their behavior...

I live in fear every day. I did not grow up this way. I do not wish to live this way.

“Nowhere feels safe anymore.”

Dunn began the discussion, citing statistics from a recent study done in the AST’s B Detachment, which canvases the Mat-Su Valley, stating that an additional 23 troopers would be needed to meet the demand of calls. Dunn is in charge of determining where he sends troopers on patrol and only has five staff to cover an area the size of West Virginia every day. Dunn splits the Valley in half using Trunk Road. On any given day, one side may only have two troopers patrolling while the other side has three.

“We’re stuck with trying to figure out when we’re going to send those resources. I’ve got to tell you, I wish we could respond to everyone immediately right as it comes in, but we’re now in the state where we must prioritize our calls when they come in: what’s the order? What’s the most urgent,” said Dunn.

Barlow, who works in Anchorage, echoed Dunn’s sentiments that troopers suffer from understaffing. Dunn read a statistic from the same study that said that the 23 extra Troopers needed was equivalent to a 57 percent increase.

“There are areas of state where they do not work on misdemeanors at all, the entire caseload is felonies,” said Barlow.

Troopers have aggressively recruited to try to fill the void, but not had the luck they were hoping. 26 recruits entered the Department of Public Safety Academy in Sitka on Sunday where they will train to become Alaska State Troopers or Alaska Wildlife Troopers. Local municipal Police and Airport Police also send their recruits to Sitka to train.

“The reality is not a lot of people want to come do this job anymore,” said Barlow.

Neighborhood Watch Coordinator Belinda Bohannon has also served as a dispatcher for AST for 12 years.

“If you leave your motorcycle on the front lawn or four-wheeler on the front lawn, more than like you can come back five minutes later and it will be gone,” said Bohannon.

Her comments mainly centered around the rise in property crime and how to prevent it. Prior to panel discussion, members of the public spoke at length about what they are seeing as far as the rise in criminal activity. Many expressed outrage over SB91.

“It’s not a secret that most Police and prosecutors are not fans of SB91 but I saw it more as an economic thing,” said Kalytiak.

“Our state had a budget crisis and people felt that by incarcerating less people you can save some money. In terms of saving costs, I think we’ve also got to look at how much does crime cost people since SB91 passed? It’s kind of a good place to be a criminal right now because laws are softer they were softened across the board.”

Johnson, who organized the event but was the only member of the panel who does not work to incarcerate or prosecute criminals, briefly remarked, looking forward to changing the current criminal climate.

“The interesting part here is we have to figure out how we’re going to address it and it’s going to cost money to do it,” said Johnson.

Ketterling also had choice words for the changes made from SB91, but stated that the problem was so multifaceted, to blame it on the opioid epidemic, the economy, or SB91 individually would not encompass the entirety of the problem.

“We’re going to continue to see this cost benefit analysis coming up on the side of the benefit rather than cost of the people that are committing these crimes,” said Ketterling.

“If you live in Palmer, your town that I happen to have the honor to be the Police Chief of, if you have an issue I want you to call us and we’ll be there.”

Ketterling encouraged on multiple occasions that residents of Palmer should feel welcome to call the police if need be. Ketterling does not suffer the same type of staffing woes that plague AST. Barlow discussed Troopers in remote areas who may be up to 200 miles away from their supervisors and work, for weeks at a time, alone. Ketterling can deploy 15 officers to cover the 5.5 square mile City of Palmer with roughly 7,000 people. Two or three PPD officers are patrolling the city at any given time.

“Crime in Palmer is up. It’s particularly up in property crimes, to a degree, and violent crimes… Nevertheless what I encourage you, if you take nothing else away from this meeting at all today, is that if you live in the City of Palmer, I want you to call us. I don’t care what it is, it’s not an interruption of our time it is our job, it is our honor to do it, we’re going to get after these people and try to arrest them and charge them to the fullest extent that we are allowed to by law...We will respond to your calls as quick as we can, in some cases it’s less than a minute,” said Ketterling.

“We rely heavily on relationships with our city and municipal Police. We literally couldn’t do it without them,” said Barlow.

Barlow revealed that not only are the nearly 250 Troopers patrolling areas outside of municipalities understaffed, but that 85 percent of command staff is eligible for retirement right now.

“We’re a bit terrified of that,” said Barlow.

Kalytiak did mention that not everything about SB91 was bad.

“The positives, I think generally in the Valley we have good working relationships between the DA’s office and the Police agencies. The other positive thing is that the feds have stepped up. They realize that state prosecutors and Police officers working within the state have limitations. They’ve picked up some bigger cases from the Valley in the past number of years,” said Kalytiak.

Numerous members of the public advocated for legal and proper use of firearms to defend property.

“There are so many classes out here in the Valley that can teach you how to be safe, to use your weapon so you’re not put in that position having a weapon in your hand and not knowing how to use it and have it taken away from you,” said Bohannon.

“As the Valley grows and as we expand, one situation that we’re looking at here, and this is not an excuse, but our number are not matching the growth,” Dunn said.

“On any given day I am lucky if I have 5 troopers working for this main hub. For me to be able to do the job the way that it needs to be done for you… I need another 23 troopers right now that I do not have. That is what the staffing study says. We’re stuck with trying to figure out when we’re going to send those resources.”

Five camera-wielding journalists were on scene to capture photos or video of the emotion displayed at the event, to go along with Palmer city Councilwoman Linda Combs, Sen. Shelley Hughes, and Rep. Cathy Tilton in the audience.

“If you want more resources for law enforcement, where does that money come from? It’s going to come from somebody else’s slice of the state pie. Locally we’re going to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t get worse and it gets better, but there’s clearly more involved to this than just something we could cover in a two hour long town hall meeting,” said Kalytiak.

Bohannon detailed that to prevent loss of property, people need to have updated inventory lists of what they own with serial numbers and identifiers. Bohannon also discussed a new online service to submit anonymous tips, including the ability to submit photos of criminal activity anonymously.

“Our lives are so busy that we really need to stop and think about our things. If you value your things then you need to know what you have,” said Bohannon.

The innumerable DeWalt drills in the Valley are not likely to be returned if stolen unless you have the serial number to identify it by.

“Phone trees, Facebook pages, different things where your neighbors can all stay in touch with each other. When I was young, neighbors were a big thing, everybody knew their neighbors and in Alaska it’s different. We need to do what we can to make their jobs easier as they’re trying to help us,” said Bohannon.

Kalytiak asked three questions to assess the problem: How bad is it? Is crime worse now than it has ever been, and is it going to get even worse? Kalytiak feels that to win the war on crime, the two probable solutions are to throw money or people at the problem.

“If you want to win a war, what wins wars is more people on your side,” said Kalytiak.

“If something doesn’t change it’s going to be more of the same for years and years and years.”