Fighting Crime in Alaska's Remote Villages

Dan Harrelson, 66, is the only first responder to all crimes, and he can also be called on for medical emergencies and fires in White Mountain, his Alaskan village of around 200 people.

Harrelson, a Minnesota native and a former U.S. Marine Corps aviation electrician, is trained as a village public safety officer, a position the state created in the late '70s to help address its unique safety issues.

Alaska has the highest violent crime rate in the nation, with one murder every six days, one rape every eight hours and one assault every two hours, according to a report released by the state's Department of Public Safety. But law enforcement is unable to respond quickly to many of these crimes.

There aren't enough state troopers to respond quickly to all parts of the state, which is one-fifth the size of the lower 48 states combined and has more than 200 native villages, many of which are remote. The state is still recovering from the nation's Great Recession, forcing a cap on the number of troopers it can fund. It can take a trooper multiple days to respond to crimes in rural areas, not only because each trooper is responsible for multiple villages but because of delayed notification and extreme weather conditions.

Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-11-15/village-public-safety-officers-in-alaska-help-fight-crime-in-remote-areas