Palmer police chief Boatright to retire

PALMER — George R. Boatright has an old scar on the inside of his thumb.

Back when he worked for the Anchorage Police Department, Boatright and a younger officer saw a man leaning up against a Dumpster. Alarm bells started going off in Boatright’s head. Then he saw why.

“He had a .44 in his right hand he was hauling back the hammer,” Boatright said.

By then Boatright had already pulled his own gun. He pulled the trigger, but the man lowered his gun. Boatright jammed his thumb into the mechanism to stop his hammer from falling. That scar is the result.

All of that, of course, happened in much less time than it took you to read about it. Boatright said that was among the closest he’d ever come to using his weapon in four decades of law enforcement. Training, he said, is the main reason he never had to shoot anyone.

“(You can) demonstrate to the person you’re dealing with that you are, if you’re pushed into the situation, willing and able to do what you have to do. I really truly believe that has prevented me from ever having to drop the hammer,” he said.

And if the next few weeks go smoothly, he’ll never have to. After 13 years at the Palmer Police Department and almost 11 as chief, he’s retiring effective May 11.

Boatright joined the Air Force after high school. Later, he worked for the space program, collecting and sorting data for space probes.

He started training with the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, but a hot summer running around in East L.A. was about all he could stand.

“I already didn’t like it down here much anyway,” Boatright said, so he moved to Alaska in 1969 — he’d been here before in the Air Force — and signed on with the Anchorage Police Department. It was an intense time to be a cop.

“It was pretty reminiscent of the Wild West in a lot of ways,” Boatright said. “It wasn’t a matter of whether you were going to be in a fight by the end of the evening, it was a matter of how many.”

During the pipeline days, there were drugs and prostitutes everywhere. Boatright said after he made sergeant he helped coordinate an effort to hit every massage parlor police could, from one end of Spenard to the other, in one night. The result was 72 criminal cases.

“More than anything it really kind of put a focus on, ‘Hey guys, this is a problem,’” Boatright said. “It was the beginning of the end for the parlors.”

In the early 1990s in Anchorage, he said, he got the first inklings of what would become a scourge in Alaska. A meth lab turned up in Spenard.

“We didn’t even know what we had,” he said.

Boatright retired from Anchorage in 1997. He went to Wyoming for while and came back. In 1999, just weeks after Palmer Police Officer James Rowland was shot and killed, PPD asked him to come lend a hand. In addition to Rowland’s death and its aftermath, the department had multiple open positions.

They were down to eight guys. Boatright signed on as a temporary officer, then as a temporary chief.

“At first I didn’t really have any intent to stay,” he said. But when he started helping with the search process, “I was so unimpressed by the applicants. And I was by then, I guess, starting to take some ownership.”

Turnover in an organization is often a good measure of morale and satisfaction. At PPD, the officer with the least amount of time in has three years. He came on board through an expansion of the roster rather than someone leaving. After that, the next least senior officer has six years.

“It’s a good organization. It really is. I’ve got to say I’m right proud of these guys,” Boatright said.

His replacement has been selected. Cmdr. Tom Remaley will take the reigns when Boatright departs. It’s not out of the question that Boatright’s retirement would result in the hiring of a patrolman and a handful of internal promotions. It’s another testament to that roster of talent Boatright is so proud of.

And though he doesn’t like to brag, he hired all but four of the department employees. He actually even hired his boss. Public Safety Director Jon Owen was an overqualified evidence custodian when he was tapped to oversee the police and fire departments.

In retirement, Boatright said, he plans to spend more time fishing. His son runs Susitna Landing, so he’ll probably spend the summer helping up there.

Sometimes that job can be almost similar to the one he’s already got. He’s fished a few people out of the lake, helped a few more who got stranded.

“That kind of thing is not uncommon up there at all,” he said.

And he plans to do something he’s always wanted to do.

“I want to take a little bit of time and go out there and do some prospecting,” Boatright said.

Small scale stuff, for sure. Maybe some metal detecting or gold panning. He said he’s too old for big equipment and sluice boxes.

And, now and then, he plans to drop by his old department.

“I’m not divorcing myself from this place by any means,” he said. And he’s not leaving Alaska. “I have absolutely no intention of going anywhere else.”

While he’s not particularly shy about sharing a war story or two, Boatright said the things he remembers most fondly are the arrests that turned out well for people. Like the 18-year-old girl he busted for her third drunken driving charge. He spent just a little extra time with her, Boatright said, but it apparently made an impact. Every Christmas for years she sent him a small bouquet of flowers. Last he heard she was married with children in Utah.

“That’s the kind of thing that makes it all worthwhile,” he said.

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