Troopers arrest Valley man for drugs, weapon charges

MEADOW LAKES — No, officer, those aren’t brass knuckles, they’re a paperweight. What paper are they holding down? The paper you just took out of my pocket.

Have failed to convince Alaska State Troopers of the truth of such an excuse, Robert R. Skoog, 30, of Wasilla, was jailed for possession of a prohibited weapon as well as multiple illegal drugs.

According to documents Alaska State Trooper Daron Cooper filed in court, Skoog was pulled over at 1:35 a.m. on the Parks Highway at Pittman Road. He had his headlights out and his windshield was cracked.

“Skoog was immediately verbally aggressive towards me and told me that his headlights were on,” Cooper wrote.

Skoog didn’t have proof of insurance and the car was unregistered. Cooper said he decided to impound the car.

“Skoog told me that I wasn’t ‘stealing’ his car and refused to exit the vehicle,” Cooper wrote.

After dispatchers told him Skoog was known to carry knives and be hostile to law enforcement, Cooper ordered him out of the car for a pat-down search. Skoog put two knives in the backseat and got out. A utility tool was found in one pants pocket and the metal knuckles in another pocket.

“Skoog stated that the metal knuckles were a paper weight and that I took the papers from his pocket that the knuckles were holding down,” Cooper writes.

Cooper said that the search of Skoog turned up a black vinyl case, a purple plastic case and a metal tin.

The vinyl case had syringes and heroin, the purple case had methamphetamines and the tin had marijuana. A pair of gram bags contained more meth and more heroin respectively. Both drugs were in a user’s amount — 1.45 grams of meth and .46 grams of heroin.

Skoog was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on $10,000 bail, charged with weapons misconduct for the metal knuckles and four counts of drug misconduct. As of Monday afternoon he was still lodged there.

Skoog has an extensive record in the court system with dozens of cases in the Valley dating as far back as 2004. The ones that were a big enough deal to make it in front of a judge were mostly dismissed.

They included assault, drug possession and the like. One of his few convictions was for drunken driving in 2007, a charge to which he pleaded guilty. He also pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault in 2005.