Police chief Jimmy Yoakum and new hire Max Marty have returned from a state police academy, adding personnel to a department that has been mired in understaffing and turnover.

For much of the past year, officers Max Jusi and Travis Russell have split round-the-clock policing duties after a third officer, interim-chief Michael Fullerton, resigned last April.

The department struggled to find a long-term occupant for its top job after seven-year chief Heath Scott resigned in 2023. 

The assembly hired Yoakum last summer, but just before the hire was finalized, the assembly learned the Alaska Police Standards Council would not accept a transfer of Yoakum’s Tennessee police credentials. That required the borough send Yoakum to a 17-week state police academy in Fairbanks, while also continuing to pay his $125,000 salary. 

Yoakum successfully completed the academy Feb. 1 and is back in Haines. 

Yoakum said the experience was a useful update on both Alaska code and new policing techniques. 

Yoakum first received his police training at a Tennessee academy in 1995. Similar to his Tennessee training, much of the Alaska State Police Academy training focused on firearms and combat skills, Yoakum said in an interview last week. 

Yoakum, however, said he observed a sea change in both training methods and policing philosophy — an improvement, he said, over his experience 30 years prior. 

Rather than simply spending time at a shooting range, Yoakum said, the Alaska police training focused on working through policing scenarios, including decision-making on when to fire or physically engage a suspect, and when to disengage. 

“Just about every single drill we did up there that I can remember, we were engaged in a survival situation, in a gunfight, and at some point you had to come off of it,” Yoakum said. 

The training, Yoakum said, also included ways to avoid confrontations in the first place. 

“In 1995, you didn’t have people carrying around guns and weapons and knives and things like that,” Yoakum said. “It was mainly just a wrestling match. But now, there’s a lot of people out there that are trained in combatives, and so if I can maintain that distance and talk with you, 85% of the time we’re going to come to a good resolution.”

Not all of Yoakum’s academy experience was focused on combat. Yoakum talked extensively about officer mental health while interviewing for the chief position, and he said mental health first aid training and officer mental health discussions at the academy were a welcome change from his first academy go-round. 

Yoakum also now has a heavily annotated textbook on his desk in the borough police department from academy courses on Alaska code and constitutional law. Yoakum said the training had a specific focus on the Fourth Amendment, which bars illegal search and seizure. 

While Yoakum and Marty were at the academy, the Haines department saw at least two high-profile policing situations, including one drug arrest and a shooting at Picture Point in November. Yoakum said he was briefed on both situations by department sergeant Max Jusi. 

“(Jusi) has a wealth of knowledge,” Yoakum said. “He’s got experience. He makes great decisions. He’s got good judgment. The information I got, there was no reason for me to second-guess him, and he continued to handle it just like he has been for the past year.”

Yoakum completed the academy alongside new department hire Max Marty. Marty, however, won’t be able to serve on his own as an officer until he completes a mandatory field-training course. For the two-and-a-half- to three-month course he’ll serve alongside Travis Russell, his field training officer. 

While he completed the police academy training, Yoakum will also have to wait until after a probationary period ends on July 22 to apply for his official Alaska Police Standards Council certification. Alaska Department of Law spokesperson Austin McDaniel said the probationary period is standard for all academy graduates, and under state law the probationary status will not change the duties Yoakum can perform. 

On top of Yoakum and Marty’s return, the borough has also begun advertising a fifth officer position.