Palmer hires new police chief

PALMER - Its a marriage made in heaven, said Laren Zager of his new position as Palmer Chief of Police.

Palmer City Manager Tom Healy offered Zager the position Monday and Zager gladly accepted. Zager will be starting at the Palmer Police Department on Jan. 19. Interim Police Chief Walt Gilmour will continue working until Jan. 25 to help Zager get settled in the office.

I crave the opportunity to go to a community and department more suited to my personality, Zager said.

Healy said Zagers education and experience made him a more enticing candidate for the job.

Hes had a full range of training and experience and education, Healy said.

Zager graduated from the FBIs National Academy with honors and holds four degrees from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, including a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and three Associate of Arts degrees in Justice, Science and Liberal Arts. He holds an Advanced Police Officer Certificate and regularly attends educational seminars and training programs relevant to his position.

Zager has been with the Anchorage Police Department for more than 15 years, seven of which he served as captain. His last two years with the department were as Commander of the Community Services Division, a 344 person division responsible for all the traditional patrol functions, plus canine, CIRT and field (District) investigations, according to information provided by Zager.

Zager has lived in the Palmer area for almost ten years, and has been hoping a suitable position would open up in Palmer.

Palmer is my area of choice, he said, and it has been for quite some time.

Leaving the Anchorage department is going to be tough, Zager said.

Im trying to muster the courage to leave a department that has been so good to me, he said.

Zager said he is excited by the prospect of putting into action some of the ideas he has come up with in his years at the Anchorage Police Department. Above that, however, he is thrilled at the idea of being called chief.

No matter how good you have it in one place, nothing does really replace the concept of being called chief, he said, in a Star Trek paraphrase.

When asked about the turmoil the Palmer police department has been through in the past year, including the May death of officer Rowland, the management audit of the department performed that summer and the subsequent retirement Chief Lamb, Zager said he had empathized with the officers and citizens who were going through the trauma at the time.

It was really disconcerting and disheartening to me as a citizen and a police professional, he said. [But] that type of controversy is all part of the normal evolution of change.

Healys hiring, the hiring of Jim Vail, the public works director, and the change in council members, however, led Zager to feel he was coming in after a wiping of the slate.

The move to a different department may be, in some ways, a way of wiping the slate for Zager as well. He was involved in charges of racial discrimination that were brought against the Anchorage Police Department in 1995. Those charges were recently dropped, according to reports from the office of Anchorage Mayor Rick Mystrom.

In 1996, Zagers name again was in the news, after the Anchorage Police Department Employee Association (APDEA) distributed a survey. About 180 of the 440 members of the association completed the survey, and those who did respond were reportedly upset with work schedule changes, perceived unfairness in their promotion system and complained about autocratic management styles.

According to the survey results, about 70 percent said they had no confidence in the abilities of two of the four captains in the department. Those two were Bruce Richter and Laren Zager.

Zager said part of the reason his name was identified is because he was the one who walked downstairs and told 300 armed people they were going to have to work one more day a week.

He was the one to inform officers their work schedule had been changed from four ten-hour shifts to five eight-hour shifts.

To the extent that my name is associated with the controversy of the shift change, I know there will be some baggage coming along with it, he said. The controversy at this end has changed focus. In my own mind, when I realize what I did and how I did it, [it] was ethically and mathematically correct.

Zager mentioned other issues that arose at the same time, many of which were changes Deputy Chief Duane Udland made to better the departments service to the Anchorage community.

I support Duane Udland in 99 percent of the things he does. He is the best in terms of the community, he said. Right there, we have a problem.

The problem, he said, was that when a chief works well with the community, often officers feel he or she is ignoring their needs in lieu of the publics. As a result, Zager said, Udland made changes in a number of areas, including cutting down overtime and overtime call-outs and changing the shift schedule from four to five days a week, which resulted in a lot of unhappiness among department employees.

Zager was confident that the issues at the Anchorage Police Department would be left behind when he made his transition to Palmer.

I think when the people in Palmer do get to know me and I have a chance to do things more my style and not supporting somebody elses style, that theyre going to be in for a pleasant surprise, he said.