The Associated Press
ANCHORAGE (AP) - The North Slope Borough will rotate its police officers in an attempt to stanch high turnover and early burnout.
Officers in the borough will work two weeks, then take two weeks off when their replacements arrive. They also will be allowed to live wherever they choose.
Borough Police Chief Paul Carr hopes rotation will keep officers around longer and save the time and money required to train them, he said.
“Anything we can do to extend the length of time they stick around is beneficial,” he said.
With a gallon of milk priced at $7, no movie theaters and the fact that the sun doesn’t rise from Nov. 20 to Jan. 20, high pay and good benefits sometimes don’t seem worth it, said Sgt. Mike Donovan, a 26-year veteran with the borough.
“Then you add the other part - it’s really cold up here,” Donovan said.
He said he’s seen new hires get off the plane in a village, look around, then buy themselves a ticket out.
Working in isolated rural Alaska communities can be tough for almost any profession, Carr said, but being a police officer in the Arctic has its own special set of challenges.
“It tends to take its toll after couple of years,” Carr said.
The first officers should be assigned to Nuiqsut, a village of nearly 500 at the edge of the Alpine oil field. Reaction in the village has ranged from lukewarm to skeptical.
“Two on, two off - it’s not right,” said council member Mae Masuleak. “It’s better if we have the same person here at all times. We get to know that officer and that officer gets to know us.”
While Carr is optimistic that two officers can successfully share the job, residents are unsure how the new officers will fare.
“My first reaction is that it’s going to be harder on the community in terms of officers getting to know the people on personal and professional levels,” said Leonard Lampe, president of the Nuiqsut Traditional Council. “Just like teachers, it takes a while for people to know and work closely with them.”
North Slope police are essentially on call 24 hours a day. The crimes often involve alcohol abuse and domestic violence.
“Even if you are Native and it happens to be your neighborhood, it’s difficult to make the arrests” because of family or social ties, Donovan said.
Job conditions have improved since he began work in 1978, Donovan said. Officers no longer use five-gallon buckets for toilets or haul their own heating fuel. Villages now have jails - he used to take prisoners home and handcuff them to an immovable object.
But turnover is high, and because of the cost of training and transportation, every officer who quits represents an economic loss to the borough, Carr said. This has become more critical as the borough, like the state, watches North Slope oil production decline.
While tax revenues have fallen in recent years, the borough still raised nearly $200 million last year - more than $21,000 for each of its 9,400 residents, according to state figures.
Unlike most of rural Alaska, which relies mainly on state and federal aid, North Slope Borough taxes fund police and fire protection, water and sewer plants, electricity, health care and other services in the region’s seven small villages and Barrow.
The police department has suffered budget cuts, and more are expected, Carr said. But if the new program can reduce costs, it could help stave off future employee cuts and keep officers in every village, he said.
The North Slope Borough Assembly conducted hearings before approving the program, but it’s new and untested and no one knows exactly how it will work, Carr said.
“We tried to anticipate all the issues and all the problems and concerns,” he said. “But I’m sure things will jump up and smack us upside the head once we get started.”