Troopers choose Bethel as their new HQ for western and northwest Alaska

In September, the Alaska State Troopers chose Bethel as the new headquarters for the agency’s C Detachment, which covers the vast majority of the western and northwest reaches of the state and was previously administered from Anchorage.

Last month, the commander of C Detachment, Capt. Andrew Merrill, sat down with KYUK’s Evan Erickson to talk about how the move to Bethel is part of a broader push to emphasize better policing in rural Alaska.

Evan Erickson: Can you just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and the history you have with this part of Alaska?

Merrill: So I started my career in Fairbanks as a patrol trooper and worked in the Interior villages outside of the Fairbanks region. I transferred to Bethel as just a regular trooper back in 2003, and I worked here from 2003 to about 2007, working in the JS unit at the courthouse for about six months. And then I did patrol in Tuluksak, Chevak, and Atmautluak were the villages I covered, and then around the rest of the region, and started flying here as a department pilot as well.

And then I transferred to Nome, and worked in Nome for about five years as a sergeant. So I was a post supervisor up there. And then I went back into Anchorage, staying with C Detachment. For those that don't know, C Detachment covers the Aleutian Islands, Kodiak, Dillingham, Bethel, area, Nome, and Kotzebue. It's massive. It's huge. It's bigger than most states in the lower 48.

And then I moved over to the program. I worked there for about five years, managing the program, working with the tribal nonprofits around the state. And then I came back to C Detachment in 2019, 2020, right about the pandemic time, and I've been in C Detachment since then. Historically, C Detachment’s headquarters has always been in Anchorage, and that's because the captain can get to all the locations from Anchorage fairly easily.

Erickson: So the push to put the C Detachment headquarters out here in Bethel, this has never been done?

Merrill: It has never been done. This is the first time that the captain has ever been stationed in Bethel or in Western Alaska for that matter. Commissioner Cockrell and Colonel Hughes both felt that it was really important to have, not only logistically and the opportunity for me to interact with my troopers more often, but also just to have me based in the communities, and being able to have that interaction, like I said, with and other organizations. Because typically it would be a day trip out here. I'd come visit somebody, I'd go back to Anchorage. And so now with me here, I'm based here every day, so it's a lot easier. And it was just a huge push by the commissioner and the colonel to make sure that we are focusing on that rural law enforcement, rural policing mission that we have as .

Erickson: What might change about trooper management in the region now that the detachment is commanded from a Bethel headquarters?

Merrill: So having a lot closer interaction with my troopers day to day. For example, I said I was in Emmonak yesterday. We have a truck that's not been operating, and unfortunately, there's filtering of information. And so sometimes the troopers will have challenges, and that gets kind of lost in translation with all the responses and stuff. And so the ability for me to have my eyes on what's actually happening and be able to visit communities, we'll see some adjustments in some things. One of our biggest struggles we're struggling with right now is just staffing. We have 91 positions in that attachment, that span that region. I have 22 vacancies. So that's a significant factor. We have just here in Bethel, I think I’ve got seven trooper vacancies.

Erickson: A huge volume of cases comes through this Bethel district court here, and I'm wondering if being headquartered in Bethel, is that helping the relationship?

Merrill: We have a really good working relationship, actually, with all of our district attorney offices across the state, and one of the challenges that we, I know that they have the same as we have, is staffing, and so I think we we communicate very well between at the sergeant and trooper level with the local district attorneys. <...> I do know that there's opportunities with me here now to have conversations about what kind of improvements we can make as troopers, because I can't really control the staffing at the district attorney's office or their ability to actually prosecute cases. But what I can control is the quality of investigations that we do that allow them to move forward with those cases or to resolve them through plea agreements or other things, based on the quality of the investigations my troopers do. And, you know, overall, I've been reviewing reports since I've been here of the troopers, just kind of spot checking here and there, and the troopers do a really good job, but there's some key things that we can do to improve, you know, having those meetings and having that interaction and being closely tied together.

Erickson: I'm very curious to hear how you would describe Bethel when you were here in 2003 versus now? What has changed?

Merrill: I think the biggest change, not only here in Bethel, but across C Detachment, is the increase in severe crimes. I used to be able to count on one hand the number of, you know, stabbings we would have, or, you know, less than one hand, the homicides. I can't even count on one hand the number of homicides just in C Detachment that we've had this year. It used to be, you know it was like, oh yeah, we had two or three homicides in an attachment. And you know, when we're sitting in October and we've had across an attachment I think nine or 10, that's a significant increase. The number of gun calls we have has also significantly increased. When I was here before as a commander, it was really a mental shift for me to make the adjustment in my brain. I came off the troopers, it was one trooper, one riot. You know, we went to a village by ourselves all the time. We would respond to, you know, gun calls, sometimes by ourselves. We don't do that anymore. If we have trooper bodies available, we send those troopers out.

Erickson: Do you foresee having a solid relationship with Bethel Search and Rescue?

Merrill: Absolutely. I think we have a good relationship with them, but I think there's always opportunities. I think one of the things I heard in the program, and that I've heard is just lack of training for some of our search and rescue groups. Part of that is training them how we do things, because sometimes, we're the state, right? And the state, we do things goofy. We like our paperwork. We like to have everything in order. Search and rescue groups don't really care. They want to find the person, right? And so sometimes it's really important for us to bridge that gap and provide training and knowledge so they understand why we need that. Because if I don't have the paperwork and the receipts, I don't get the money to pay them back, so we need to help do that. So I think one of the things that we'll see is the ability to help. And it’s sad to say this, but sometimes the bars bring stuff. the captain I can say, yeah, I want this to absolutely happen. And so I think by being here, I'll have that ability to maybe influence and get some additional training and provide some additional resources to help build that relationship.

Erickson: You have a staff shortage right now in the C Detachment, as far as you said. And is part of filling that also building up the tribal enforcement side?

Merrill: Yes. One of the things we're doing to try to support that, and we were super happy that Yuut had stepped in, because one of the challenges with tribal police officers and village police officers is the training component. And what we found is we did not, as a department, have the ability. And so we have the Public Safety Academy, the training academy down in Sitka. That's where all of our troopers go. That's where go to be trained. That's an 18-week academy, which is a lot more than a lot of our tribal police officers or village police officers want to go to, and it's not required for them to be certified. And so we found that by shipping them to Sitka, having them be gone that long, it's a pretty intensive training, it just wasn't that successful. And so Yuut has taken over providing that training. And so they actually have a village police officer training academy they hold here in Yuut , and they have on staff, he’s a retired trooper actually, but he’s actually the manager of that training. I believe they run two a year at a minimum, and one of the benefits they have is they have the ability to tap into federal funding, so training and education funding for tribes which the state doesn't have the ability to tap into.

Erickson: Do you think the state's going in the right direction with addressing Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP)?

Merrill: Yes, I think we're absolutely making some positive steps in providing additional resources. I think it's always good to have a secondary set of eyes, or have an investigator that has additional time to maybe go back and look at a couple of things and say, ‘Hey, maybe we should ask a couple of things.’ A majority of our MMIP in Alaska, and specifically in Western Alaska, the majority of them are search and rescue based, are people who, snowmachining, boating, or other things that we don't ever find. We do have some suspicious ones that do happen, and sometimes we solve them. In some cases, it takes us 20 years, depending on what technology and resources are available, but other times we are, a lot of our cold cases, we call them cold cases because they aren't closed, they are just, we're waiting for more information. We've done everything we think we can. And so the ability to bring in MMIP investigators dedicated specifically to looking at those cases is a huge stride forward for us.

Erickson: Are you happy to be back in Bethel?

Merrill: I am super excited to be back to Bethel. Early in my career, I did my time here. I went to Nome. Rural Alaska and serving our rural tribal communities has been most of my career. With the exception of probably a year and a half on patrol chasing tail lights in Fairbanks, the rest of my time has been working in Western Alaska communities, either the program or C Detachment specifically. <...>

But having, you know, served in Western Alaska, in the communities, I'm excited about being in the small communities, going to Emmonak yesterday, and seeing a that I worked with 17 years ago was just, it was a super awesome feeling, and have them recognize me. They were like, ‘Hey, Trooper Merrill.” And I’m like yeah, it’s good that somebody knows from my time out here. So I'm excited that the department and the commissioner and the colonel have taken the step to put their money where their mouth is, right? They moved a commander out here to show that this is a priority. Western Alaska and rural Alaska is the State Troopers' responsibility. It's what we do, and we sometimes get tied up. We use training posts in Fairbanks and those locations, because we have to give troopers high-volume calls early in their career to get experience. But Western Alaska, rural Alaska is what we should be focused on. And that's what the commissioner has said multiple times, the colonel as well. And this just shows that they are serious about that, that they are putting resources out here.