Alaskan Armed Citizen Saves Unarmed Officers, Foils Mass Shooting

I've heard some crazy things about some of those remote Alaska villages, but a 10 officer department that is unarmed? That's truly crazy.

I found it surprising as well. I wonder what was the reason for it ?

Many of those villages take "isolate in place" to a whole different level. This could have so easily been much worse.

It's good to know that nobody was killed.

They're actually called "Village Public Safety Officers", not "Village Police Officers", as the articles call them. I don't know if that makes a difference in whether or not they can be armed under Alaska law.

I've seen many episodes of "Alaska State Troopers" in which an AST has to interact with a VPS officer, in any of several villages, and none of those PSOs have been armed.

Ya, there was a whole newspaper series on the lack of policing in the remote native villages that dot Northern AK. Most of them are a part of the local band of people and they try and handle things tribally as much as they can.

It’s sad really, they try to have these folks handle things but they’re always outnumbered, untrained, way underpaid and often hours or days away from any type of backup or assistance if something becomes a criminal issue or they’re in over their head.

Stay safe.

There are alot of belligerent drunk or drugged people in some of those small villages. It seems like it's dangerous and a real pain in the ass. Plus real bad actors fleeing the lower 48.

With so much of the native population having a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, it's hard to imagine officers being unarmed.

The article stated that they couldn't afford to be sued! That right there is every reason to not do the job.

If the state doesn't take care of them and any legal issues, why would anyone want that job?! If all you did all day was worry about being sued, how could you do your job properly?

At least someone was there to help out and get that POS off the streets! I'm sure, depending on his personal issues he'll be back on the streets.

Hopefully they charge him and keep him in jail or in a mental institution for the rest of his life! He took the time to plan out his murder spree and would've carried it out if he hadn't been stopped.

Hopefully in time, AK will get those officers armed and take care of any legal issues they have while on the job!

Well, it looks like I might be the only Alaskan around at the moment, so I guess I should comment.

First, they're not village police; they're Village Public Safety Officers. They are not sworn law enforcement officers, and they do not have firearms training, hence they are unarmed. This has come up in state politics a number of times, increasingly so in the past five years or so. As someone mentioned earlier, the Anchorage Daily News (adn dot com) did a series of articles about this last year.

The state is having a terrible time recruiting for VPSOs. (And they recently cut the recruiting budget for the program.) Long hours, low pay, (perhaps no guns) and I'm sure the list goes on.

There is a long list of social problems in the villages. Alcohol and drug use is at the top of that list. So much so that the state is now training teachers to identify and deal with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorders in the public schools. Many, if not most, rural native viullages are dry. Many, if not most, opted out of the state's marijuana legalization.

Incest and sexual abuse of children is a long standing concern. Sexual assault of native Alaskan women-even in the larger cities (often times underreported, uninvestigated or not punished - the adn just published a series on that, as well) is another long standing problem.

Unemployment in the villages is extremely high (80% or more). The primary employers out there are the federal government (USFWS, BLM, etc) and the local school districts. (Who also have a difficult retaining teachers.)

Trey Veston said:

I've heard some crazy things about some of those remote Alaska villages, but a 10 officer department that is unarmed? That's truly crazy.

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Bear in mind that a "10 officer department" often has an area the size of NY, NH, VT, and ME to police. And let's also be clear that VPSO doesn't mean a person from that village. A VPSO could be from his own village and police 5 others in the region. In village closer to the larger cities, it's not uncommon to hire a non native person, sometimes from out of state, to be the VPSO.

And since someone mentioned AK State Troopers (TV Show which the troopers discontinued).

AST is supposed to be our rural police force, which is probably why we don't arm VPSOs, but the city of Wasilla, pop. 10k, which is on the road system and an hour drive from the state's largest city (Anchorage), has more state troopers than anywhere in the state. Add that to the fact that AST has less than 500 sworn officers, and they police an area roughly equivalent to 2/3 the size of the lower 48 states.

Deleted. I'm going a bit off topic here.

I used to work in Alaska. It's a far cry from the rest of the county. Alaska has three different levels of law enforcement officers, the State Troopers, Municipal Police, and Village Protection Safety Officers. The VPSO's were never intended to be police officers. They were members of small villages and were given limited training to serve as an adjunct to the State Troopers who would respond and handle significant criminal issues. One big problem with the program is that the VPSO's were never properly equipped to handle emergent criminal activities. Most of the VPSO's were "on call" and were not regularly employed as such.

The pay and stature of the positions didn't attract qualified folks to serve and a lot of the village leaders had to "arm twist" folks into taking the positions. You gotta remember that a lot of the villages only have 100-200 folks and a VPSO may only handle one or two traditional police calls for service in a month.

Another problem with arming the VPSO's is that a lot of them possess firearms disabilities from domestic violence and felony convictions.

RickD427 said:

The pay and stature of the positions didn't attract qualified folks to serve

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So much so that a few, here and there, are, or at least were, actually convicted felons.

D.B. Cooper said:

So much so that a few, here and there, are, or at least were, actually convicted felons.

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Here's a pretty good news article describing the situation (with some good photos to illustrate): https://www.adn.com/lawless/2019/07...-cop-has-been-convicted-of-domestic-violence/

I've heard from people who lived in Alaska, especially in the middle of nowhere there, that the State has a very small number of LEO given it's size and population. So if someone who lives there is forced to kill a criminal in self defense... Doesn't live in one of Cities, what are they supposed to do? And it is middle of Winter...

22250Rem said:

I found it surprising as well. I wonder what was the reason for it ?

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Only 38 Village Public Safety Officer in the entire state and it's been in trouble for a long time. NOT a resident of Alaska but this isn't really ins't a 'police department'..ala a rear city/county sheriff's department.

https://www.propublica.org/article/alaskas-public-safety-officer-program-is-failing-can-it-be-saved

I guess 'RTET', 'Read the Entire Thread'....lots of info above about rural Alaska...

If I'm not mistaken doesn't Alaska have a Special Fund that is funded by fees paid by Companies that do logging. mining and oil drilling, and etc? The State can't use that funding to provide for larger and better equipped, and wider spread LEO forces?

I would much rather be an armed citizen than an unarmed officer of the law.

whm1974 said:

If I'm not mistaken doesn't Alaska have a Special Fund that is funded by fees paid by Companies that do logging. mining and oil drilling, and etc? The State can't use that funding to provide for larger and better equipped, and wider spread LEO forces?

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You may be referring to the "Permanent Fund." It's funded from oil revenues and is used in place of the state income tax. The fund revenues have historically exceeded expenditures and the excess "refunded" to the taxpayers. Alaska is the only state with no income tax and that pays a refund every year on that tax.

The state has changed quite a bit from when I lived there. The political spectrum used to run from "Arch Conservative" on the far right to "Moderately Conservative" on the far left. The state now actually has some Democrats, but it still remains very fiscally conservative. The native villages never had much visibility on the state government. As tribal entities, their main interaction was with the federal government. The Native Claims Settlement Act was intended to provide the tribes (read that as synonymous with villages) with sufficient capital to become self-sustaining. The tribes that invested their dollars have done well and can fund things like their police and medical care. The tribes that distributed their monies and then drank it up cannot. You're going to find a lot of resistance in state government to efforts to replace those monies with state funds.

RickD427 said:

You may be referring to the "Permanent Fund." It's funded from oil revenues and is used in place of the state income tax. The fund revenues have historically exceeded expenditures and the excess "refunded" to the taxpayers. Alaska is the only state with no income tax and that pays a refund every year on that tax.

The state has changed quite a bit from when I lived there. The political spectrum used to run from "Arch Conservative" on the far right to "Moderately Conservative" on the far left. The state now actually has some Democrats, but it still remains very fiscally conservative. The native villages never had much visibility on the state government. As tribal entities, their main interaction was with the federal government. The Native Claims Settlement Act was intended to provide the tribes (read that as synonymous with villages) with sufficient capital to become self-sustaining. The tribes that invested their dollars have done well and can fund things like their police and medical care. The tribes that distributed their monies and then drank it up cannot. You're going to find a lot of resistance in state government to efforts to replace those monies with state funds.

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So Alcoholism is a major problem in the State? What about Drug Addiction and Homelessness? How Unemployment?

I'm not too sure if I want to live in a State where there is a serious lack of dependable police when you do need them... Any Major Gun Control Attempts that Gun Owners need to worry about?

D.B. Cooper said:

And since someone mentioned AK State Troopers (TV Show which the troopers discontinued).

AST is supposed to be our rural police force, which is probably why we don't arm VPSOs, but the city of Wasilla, pop. 10k, which is on the road system and an hour drive from the state's largest city (Anchorage), has more state troopers than anywhere in the state. Add that to the fact that AST has less than 500 sworn officers, and they police an area roughly equivalent to 2/3 the size of the lower 48 states.

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I actually did learn from the show AST that there are 'peace officer' [ more like peace keeping ] that work alone in many villages that are so remote that a trooper has to fly in to get there .

If & when he is really needed.

As a retired cop who had backup ,usually no more than a few minutes out [ yea,there were a few times that didnt work ] ,I got a huge boost out of watching AST as IF they had backup ----- it could he minutes,hours,or DAYS away.

But as to why anyone would take a job as a 'peace keeper' in a village ,that he is not even from = ***.

Very dangerous job under good circumstances.

scaatylobo said:

I actually did learn from the show AST that there are 'peace officer' [ more like peace keeping ] that work alone in many villages that are so remote that a trooper has to fly in to get there .

If & when he is really needed.

As a retired cop who had backup ,usually no more than a few minutes out [ yea,there were a few times that didnt work ] ,I got a huge boost out of watching AST as IF they had backup ----- it could he minutes,hours,or DAYS away.

But as to why anyone would take a job as a 'peace keeper' in a village ,that he is not even from = ***.

Very dangerous job under good circumstances.

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Chances are, they only took it because they can't a get a job doing anything else?