Haines Borough interim police chief Robert Griffiths addressed a wide range of topics at Tuesday’s town hall meeting, including recent department improvements, drug and alcohol abuse, Haines Animal Rescue Kennel contract negotiations and whether or not he’ll stay on as the municipality’s permanent chief.
When asked whether he intends to stay, Griffiths repeated that he hasn’t yet made a decision, but revealed he is considering a position elsewhere.
“Quite honestly, I’ve interviewed for another position,” he said. “It’s a fulltime, long-term position elsewhere that I had applied for a long time ago. I haven’t gotten an answer from them yet, so a lot will depend on that.”
Griffiths said he hopes to make a decision in a week.
At the beginning of the town hall meeting at the Chilkat Center, Griffiths scrolled through PowerPoint slides containing “Before and After” photos of the department demonstrating improvements that have been made since the borough’s damning $22,000 police study was released.
The evidence room is being organized and catalogued, and seized weapons are being stored in a locked cabinet. Evidence is being tagged with barcodes and placed in large plastic totes, which will also be barcoded and scanned to keep track of where items are stored, he said.
Some fixes were simpler than others. For example, a large refrigerator containing four years’ worth of blood samples had been “secured” by placing a piece of tape across the door. The door is now secured with a lock.
After the brief presentation, Griffiths took questions from the audience. Bill Kurz asked how much of a problem the legalization of marijuana presents to the community.
“We’ve seen what alcohol does to this town, and we all know (somebody) who smokes weed. And we’ve watched them over the course of their life – if we’ve been lucky enough that they’ve been around long enough for us to do that – and we’ve seen the long-term effects it has on them,” Griffiths said.
“My personal opinion is it’s a very bad thing, but my personal opinion got over-voted,” he added.
Griffiths said he and his wife Kathy, who was in the audience, have raised adopted children who have been affected by drugs.
“We’ve seen personally the impact of those effects on the youth as they go through school and they fail or they just don’t perform. We’ve seen the impact. Then subsequently because they failed in school, they become delinquents and then become involved in police departments and the judicial system and the court system. And then we’ve seen them have to go on and get mental health counseling; not just counseling, sometimes institutionalization,” he said.
Griffiths also addressed the idea of community policing, which involves building relationships and trust with residents who then feel comfortable calling police when they see something amiss. As an example, Griffiths referred to a current ongoing domestic violence situation.
“We now have, shall we say, neighbors who have been educated. (They know) when they hear something going on not to just ignore it, because it’s likely to be a flare-up of that problem,” he said. “(They know) to call us immediately and not wait until they hear screaming or gunshots.”
The animal control question arose when a member of the audience asked why the borough and Haines Animal Rescue Kennel were having trouble negotiating a contract.
“The issue has been basically a fundamental business disagreement on what we’re buying for our money, for your money,” Griffiths said. “That is still an ongoing and active conversation. It hasn’t ended whatsoever.”