Crime statistics in for Girdwood: Traffic violations, DUIs lead list

Ken Smith/Turnagain Times Trooper Sgt. Bryan Barlow, 36, sits in his office at the Girdwood Post. As of May, Barlow will have completed his first year of duty in Glacier Valley. 2007 was a busy first year for him and the four full-time Troopers. In 2007 they responded to 133 motor vehicle crashes on the Seward Highway between milepost 61 and milepost 111. There were also 37 DUI arrests in Girdwood last year.

By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times

The 2007 crime statistics are in for Girdwood and Driving Under the Influence along with traffic violations lead the list.
Sgt. Bryan Barlow heads up the Girdwood Post. In one more month, he will have worked his first full year in Glacier Valley. He previously worked in Ketchikan, where he was based for two years, and prior to that served in Ninilchik, Fairbanks and Sitka. Needless to say, the 36-year-old Trooper has logged a lot of hours in law enforcement in very diverse communities.
Barlow and the four full-time Troopers (one Alaska Wildlife Trooper) that make up the Girdwood Post have faced unique challenges serving a resort community along the busy Seward Highway. Three of the Troopers have been here for two years, and Barlow and another Trooper (Peterson) are finishing up their first year.
As Barlow reviewed the statistics of crimes and violations in the valley, he spoke openly about the community and law enforcement.
Topping the serious crimes category for 2007 was Driving Under the Influence. There were 37 DUI arrests made last year—not a startling number, but a lot for a community the size of Girdwood.
“There’s also a lot of other calls and cases involving alcohol,” Barlow said. “I’d say the number of DUIs is pretty substantial for a community of 2,000, but there’s also a good influx of out of town people here. Anchorage is down the street, and a pretty fair amount of arrests are people coming down on weekends in fall and summer. I’d say probably 40 percent are local DUIs.”
Four Troopers working to police the local communities as well as the Seward Highway is a large task for a small staff, not to mention their involvement in search and rescues as far away as Turnagain Pass. Sometimes a Trooper is called to serve temporarily at another post or if one or two gets sick, the level of law enforcement in the area is dramatically affected, limiting the number of patrols.
“So we haven’t been as aggressive as we’d like to be,” Barlow said. “If we had a concentrated effort, a couple of people every night hunting DUIs, I’m pretty confident, we could have someone in jail almost every day.”
That’s not to say local Trooper presence is always subtle and low profile in Girdwood. Barlow has fielded complaints about law enforcement in the community both good and bad for being too aggressive. One common complaint that surfaced last summer was that Troopers were harassing people in local bars by conducting periodic onsite inspections and pointing out intoxicated patrons and identifying them verbally as being “drunk.”
Barlow said he received a quite a few calls about it, but he defended the action of the Troopers.
“We started getting a number of complaints that people said they were getting harassed by the Troopers, and they didn’t feel safe anymore,” he said. “We’re going into a bar where people are obliterated drunk and that is absolutely the responsibility of the bartender not serving people that are severely drunk. We’ve got people here who have been warned. There’s a drunk on licensed premise, and the bartender can be charged. To say we’re being too aggressive seems absolutely ridiculous to me. That just shows there’s a problem there, but the problem is not us, and we’ll continue doing bar checks aggressively, and they’re not going to stop.”
Barlow added that Troopers are going to the bars to talk to bartenders and talk to the people at the bar, not to harass them but simply stay visible and observant.
“We’re doing what we’re suppose to do, patrolling,” he said.
Barlow said 90 percent of people are drinking responsibly, but there’s the other smaller portion that are not responsible. And he said for every complaint he gets, he receives another call thanking them for keeping the community safe. “A lot of what we do here is keep the peace.”
One of the primary responsibilities of the Troopers is to keep the highway safe, a job that takes up a majority of their law enforcement time. Last year there were 133 motor vehicle crashes on the Seward Highway within the Girdwood area between milepost 61 and milepost 111. Twenty-six of those accidents resulted in injuries, and three were fatal (one involving a motorcycle).
That section of highway is a safety zone with speed limits between 55 mph and 65 mph. Fines are doubled for speeding within the safety zone, but speeding is still a serious and frequent problem.
“People aren’t going to slow down,” Barlow said. “We’re stopping people all the time; 80s and 90s is routine. You widen the road and straighten it out and people are going to speed. It’s inevitable.”
He said the Troopers remain vigilant and aggressive with traffic enforcement to basically keep drivers’ aware.
“Our objective is not to hit people in the pocket book but to gain compliance.”
Drug sales and use in the area is the most challenging area of law enforcement, and the job goes beyond local Troopers with special drug enforcement agencies involved. Much of this work goes unnoticed and involves two or more years of investigation and surveillance. And, yes, Girdwood has its drug dealers, as do other communities on the Turnagain Arm and Whittier, but statistically, it is the smaller cases, marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines users that show up on the Trooper Report.
Drugs and alcohol abuse are interrelated with domestic violence much of the time, Barlow said. In 2007, 20 people were charged with domestic violence assault in the local area.
“I don’t think the number reported is actually what’s going on out there,” Barlow said. “Those are crimes that are historically under reported. I think it could be four or five times that.”
On the drug front, Barlow said he doesn’t think the problem is any worst than other communities of similar size and mainly involves users.
“It’s not often that we’re getting called to homes for drugs being sold or manufactured,” he said. “Most of our arrests are smaller level possession of drugs usually found on traffic stops. Marijuana, cocaine, meth, heroin, all of which we’ve seized. Every community has substantial drug problems that I’ve worked at.”
Barlow said Girdwood has a reputation for drug use like marijuana, but it’s not just locals doing the drugs.
He said there have been times when during a response to a residents’ call for something other than drugs, when he found marijuana plants being grown, at times four or five plants in one household.
“We are investigating larger scale drug possession and manufacturing in Girdwood,” he said. “There are people in the community selling drugs, and they have large quantities of it.”