WPD’s silver anniversary marks a year of changes for the department

WASILLA — The Wasilla Police Department is celebrating its 25th anniversary this summer in addition to other changes which include a new police K-9, a future headquarter move and the expansion of their School Resource Officer program.

WPD became operational on July 1, 1993, and to commemorate the event there will be a presentation at the next Wasilla City Council meeting on July 23, where a mayoral proclamation will be given, as well as a historical presentation with a timeline of the police department’s most notable moments over the years. Cupcakes will be provided for attendees, according to WPD spokesperson, Amanda Graham.

In the past 25 years, the WPD has seen eight police chiefs and five police K-9s. They have grown from eight commissioned officers to 25 as of 2016, according to their website. The year of their establishment, their first call to service happened to be the theft of a parrot from the local feed store, according to Graham.

Graham has been doing her best to work through police records in order to make the WPD timeline, but a lot of the documents don’t have dates. Some of the things she has found had been lost in time. The department’s very first police dog was one of them.

“Nobody knew that we had a dog named Ibew until I was looking through and found a Frontiersman article where then-mayor Sarah Palin was giving a check from the local IBEW for our very first K-9,” she said.

None of the original staff are still at the WPD, but the longest working member of the team, Eileen Markiel, has been there since 1997.

Markiel, who is retiring this year from her job as evidence custodian, has been through seven of the police chiefs and all of the department dogs. She feels that the department itself has changed most in terms of technology, which has helped to streamline the officer's jobs, making their duties much safer than in the past.

“I see changes in the community probably in a more negative light than most. We’re just dealing with so much more drug use, which in turn leads to more crime and more victims,” she said in an email.

One of Markiel’s favorite stories from her time at the WPD was when a man was arrested for a DUI while on his way to spread his father’s ashes. He later called Markiel, worried that his father’s remains had been lost.

“I assured him that his father’s ashes would remain safe in my custody until he was released from jail,” she said.

The department has also recently acquired their newest K-9, after the retiring of their last police dog, Marshal in April of 2017. Two-year-old Echo, a female Belgian Malinois who has been in service since May, was the first WPD dog to be crowdfunded. She is a dual purpose K-9 trained in tracking, as well as vehicle and building searches for narcotics, including heroin, methamphetamines, opiates, cocaine and basic amphetamines, according to Graham, who has seen having a trained K-9 to be a major benefit to the department.

“Before we had Echo, we were unable to rely on the services of a K-9, and it relied on us having to call AST [to] see if they had a dog available for vehicle searches and search warrants,” Graham said.

A few weeks ago, the WPD closed the bid for the architects who will build on their new location at the old Iditarod School on Wasilla-Fishhook road. They moved into their current building, which used to be a bank, in 2001. The Veteran’s Wall of Honor will also be moved to the same property.

Graham hopes that the new location will have more space in terms of office area, parking, storage and training facilities.

“We’ve got all of our officers cramped into what used to be the bank’s lobby,” she said.

The WPD’s SRO program will also be expanding from one school to three. Currently, Wasilla High School is the only school with a SRO.

“This coming school year, we are planning on having two more SROs working with the school district. I believe there’s going to be one at Houston High and one at Colony High,” Graham said.