By Karen Garcia
In a recent interview, Haines Borough interim police chief Robert Griffiths said he wants to encourage community involvement – like the help of two residents who came forward with evidence that led to convictions in a 2013 car break-ins spree – during his tenure here.
In 90 percent of cases, police don’t have a problem identifying perpetrators, Griffiths said. The difficulty is proving that person committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
“That requires a collaborative relationship with the community. So if someone tells you that so-and-so did something, I need to know who told you that so I can try to follow the rumor back to where they heard it from the person’s own mouth. That’s evidence. But the rest of it is just rumor. I can’t prosecute anybody on rumor,” Griffiths said.
Building rapport with residents is the only way police are going to be able to solve any kind of crime in a town as small as Haines, he said.
“Unless somebody saw something or unless we get incredibly lucky and come up with somebody’s latent fingerprint on a crime scene, a lot of times these things are just going to flat go unsolved. What I want to encourage the community to do is to embrace the fact that public safety is as much their responsibility as it is the uniformed officers. They are our eyes and ears.”
To that end, Griffiths is trying to get officers more engaged in the community. Right now, it appears there’s a strong separation between their personal and professional lives, Griffiths observed. One strategy for breaking down that barrier is having officers interact with the public beyond just pulling them over for a speeding ticket or interviewing them about a bar fight.
“You park your car on Main Street and you get out, and instead of stopping in front of a bar and going in and just doing a bar check and getting in your car and driving away, you walk the street for four or five blocks. You talk to the people that are out there. You say ‘Hi’ to them. You find out what is going on in their lives. You ask them if they’ve seen anything they need to talk about,” Griffiths said.
Griffiths began his law enforcement career in 1975 in Medford, Ore., where he worked for eight years as a patrol and correctional officer. In 1983, he came to Alaska to work for the Anchorage Police Department, where he retired in 2001 as lieutenant.
Cases in Anchorage ranged from homicides to severe assaults to robberies. The most rewarding work Griffiths has done in his career also happened in Anchorage; it involved handling child abuse cases, including sex crimes.
“Those were very complex, long, involved investigations that required all sorts of investigative methodologies,” Griffiths said. “I was able to bring to justice – I guess, if you will – a fair number of predators. That was, I guess, the most rewarding section, because you had felt you had made a difference in a person’s life.”
After retiring in 2001, Griffiths worked as director of the Pacific Northwest division of the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center until 2009. After a three-year stint with the Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police, he moved to Cordova to work as chief in 2011.
In Cordova, Griffiths put his ideas about small-town policing into play: developing sources and building relationships in order to tackle the community’s serious drug problem. By developing a confidential informant and making controlled purchases, the department was able to secure several convictions. “We did get a lot of meth off the street and we threw about four people in jail,” he said.
Griffiths called the case a “major effort” for the department, because everybody in town knew every cop, whether they were in uniform or not. Officers found text messages on the drug dealers’ phones detailing officer whereabouts at certain times, so everyone would know where the officers were.
“We made a dent in that particular aspect of how drugs were getting into town, but there were probably a half-dozen other ones,” he said.
In 2013, Griffiths left the job for family reasons. He and his family embarked on a year-long voyage on a 50-foot yacht from Savannah, Georgia, to Scappoose, Ore. Since moving to Scappoose, Griffiths has kept busy doing construction, handyman work and consulting.
Still, Griffiths had been hoping to get back to Alaska. He wasn’t actively pursuing it, but the idea popped backed into his head when friend and former colleague Greg Russell of the Soldotna-based Russell Consulting LLC gave him a call. Russell is conducting the borough’s $22,000 study of the police department.
“He said, ‘I know you, and from what I’ve seen in Haines from my assessment, you’re what they need.’ He stroked my ego, I guess you would say,” Griffiths said.
During his long Alaskan career, Griffiths has heard things about Haines on the grapevine. “I have heard that Haines historically has had some problems in its department. That’s what I’ve been told.”
That’s something he is hoping to change in his time here.
Griffiths hit the ground running, arriving for the job on Beer Fest weekend. Since then, he has observed some of the department’s strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths include the dedication of existing personnel, and the experience of the current officers, Jeremy Groves and Josh Dryden. “That’s not something you find in a lot of small towns in Alaska. It’s not all Alaskan experience, but it’s law enforcement experience,” he said.
Dryden and Groves are also very personable. “That is absolutely critical to being able to do your job in a small town. If nobody will talk to you, you can’t do your job,” Griffiths said.
A weakness, which Griffiths was made aware of before he even accepted the job in Haines, is the community’s diminished support. That could be improved, he said.
“Much of that improvement comes from the fact that they haven’t had a lot of good-quality and consistent law enforcement for quite a while. So I think consistency and application of rules and regulations and ordinances and statutes is going to be paramount to trying to restore a real solid reputation for integrity and fairness in the community,” Griffiths said.
Morale within the department also could improve, he said. “Generally speaking, the officers are happy that they work here. They feel that they are getting personal satisfaction out of doing the job. Turnover has occurred, will occur, will continue to occur, and it is directly related to pay scale.”
Higher pay scales in larger communities like Fairbanks, Juneau and Anchorage tend to draw officers away from small towns with lower pay scales after the officers have racked up experience, he said. Griffiths isn’t saying the borough can or should have a higher pay scale; that’s just the way it is.
“If you’re not getting paid what you think you’re worth or what you need to survive within a community, then your morale is going to be down. And if your morale is already down, then it is very easy to find a reason, or another reason, to move on,” he said.
Griffiths is currently working on hiring a fourth officer to round out the department. (The borough’s budget for next year put a freeze on hiring a fifth officer.) Griffiths said he would like to find someone who has already lived in town and train that person.
“If I could find somebody that is already here and has chosen to live here and be here and everything else and they can pass the training, then I will gladly hire somebody like that,” Griffiths said. “They’ve already survived in town. They know they can do it.”
Griffiths is contracted to work here through November.