Few people turned out to testify at a public hearing on the Matanuska Susitna Borough budget in Wasilla Thursday night, but those who did outlined a disturbing trend.
Wasilla mayor Bert Cottle faced the Matanuska Susitna Borough Assembly and told the panel that drug enforcement resources in the Valley are overwhelmed.
“We currently have three Alaska State Troopers attached to the state drug unit out here. That’s it for a 100,000 people. Nothing against those people, they are working as hard as they can, but they need help.”
Cottle said currently, law enforcement officers have their hands full dealing with heroin users, when focus needs to be put on the dealers
“So what we have come up with, the city of Palmer and the city of Wasilla, if we can find the funding, each of us will put one officer on that drug unit,” Cottle said.
The cities of Palmer and Wasilla are planning to start a Drug Enforcement Team, which would bring two more law enforcement officers to the Valley, one in each city, and Cottle and other speakers at the meeting urged the Borough to support a one hundred thousand dollar request for a one time line item in the budget to help pay for the extra officers.
Wasilla’s police chief Gene Belden joined Cottle in asking for Borough support for a drug task force.
“In 2014, our patrol here in Wasilla, just off of traffic stops and regular contacts, we seized $31,500 worth of drugs, excluding marijana,” said Belden. “In 2015, we
patrol only in the city here, $152,000. That’s quite a jump.”
Belden said that lack of manpower is cutting enforcement efforts in half.
“What we are doing is catching the users, we are not being able to catch the people who are dealing or supplying the dealers,” Belden said.
Michelle Overstreet, who provides transient housing for homeless teenagers, said heroin has flooded Wasilla, especially among vulnerable adolescents
“We are doing battle with heroin every single day,” said Overstreet. “We have lost kids to overdose, we have lost kids to addiction. And they are now down a rabbit trail with their heroine use and we can’t find them. Or they come in once in a while and they are an absolute train wreck.”
She said dealers routinely lurk near a teen drop in center
“And they sit there and wait for the kids that are doing well in our building, and that are trying to stay clean and sober, to come out, and they are like parasites waiting over there to relapse,” Overstreet said.
Overstreet told the panel that law enforcement is the missing piece in a program to help homeless youth.
Mayor Cottle told the Assembly that he has also requested help from Anchorage mayor Ethan Berkowitz.
“Cause the last time I checked, I think the drugs go both ways,” said Cottle. “It doesn’t stop at the Borough line. So if we can do that, it would take the task force from three to six, and I think we could make some changes.”
Cottle told the Assembly that the budget request would be contingent on the cities of Palmer and Wasilla raising enough money to pay the $260 thousand dollars a year needed for the additional officers.
Myer Hutchinson, spokesman for the Berkowitz administration, said the Anchorage mayor supports the concept of the drug enforcement team, but at this time, as Anchorage is working to build up it’s police force, it is not possible to loan an officer to another location.
APTI Reporter-Producer Ellen Lockyer started her radio career in the late 1980s, after a stint at bush Alaska weekly newspapers, the Copper Valley Views and the Cordova Times. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Valdez Public Radio station KCHU needed a reporter, and Ellen picked up the microphone.
Since then, she has literally traveled the length of the state, from Attu to Eagle and from Barrow to Juneau, covering Alaska stories on the ground for the AK show, Alaska News Nightly, the Alaska Morning News and for Anchorage public radio station, KSKA
elockyer (at) alaskapublic (dot) org | 907.550.8446 | About Ellen
