Webinar Transcript: Background Investigations Overview and 

Considerations for Law Enforcement Personnel in Alaska 

Native Villages

Slide 1

00:00:00

Matt Lysakowski: Hello and welcome to this webinar: Background Investigations Overview and 

Considerations for Law Enforcement Personnel in Alaska Native Villages. My name is Matt Lysakowski. 

I'm the COPS Office's Senior Advisor for Tribal Affairs and I will be the moderator for today's webinar.

Slide 2

00:00:16

Matt Lysakowski: Today we'll be focusing on background investigations and basic academy training for 

village and tribal police officers, including what background investigations are, and why they are 

important. This webinar is being recorded and will be available for future viewing on the COPS Office 

website. We are very excited to host this important webinar on background investigations and the basic 

academy for village and tribal police officers.

Last July, Attorney General William Barr declared a law enforcement emergency in rural Alaska and the 

COPS Office has responded not only with awards for officer positions for Alaska Native villages, but also 

technical assistance activities such as this webinar. While the COPS Office has heard from tribes and the 

law enforcement community in general about the challenges of recruiting and retaining officers, hiring 

highly qualified personnel for these positions of trust is important to building effective partnerships and 

support with the community.

Slide 3

00:01:12

Matt Lysakowski: The COPS Office recently began requiring background investigations for officers 

funded through our Tribal Resources Grant Program and our COPS Hiring Program.

Tribal Resources Grant Program funded officers are also required to attend a basic law enforcement 

training academy program. The costs for these activities are an eligible expense under the Tribal 

Resources Grant Program. We have developed a frequently asked questions document that is available 

at the link on this slide. We developed this webinar to assist not only our Tribal Resources Grant 

Program and COPS Hiring Program grantees, but also any Alaska Native village looking at hiring officers 

in their community. Our goal is to provide an overview of background investigations, including what 

background investigations may cover and how they may be conducted as well as to inform you about 

basic academy options for VPOs and TPOs in Alaska.
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Slide 4

00:02:04

Matt Lysakowski: We are honored to have three subject matter experts joining us today, all of whom 

bring many years of experience in these topics to share their knowledge and expertise. Our first 

presenter will be Bob Griffiths. Bob is the Executive Director of the Alaska Police Standards Council. Prior 

to his current position with the council, Bob was an officer for Anchorage Police Department for nearly 

20 years and served as chief of police in Cordova and Haines, Alaska.

Next, we will have Sergeant Dave Willson present. Sergeant Willson joined the Alaska State Troopers in 

2001, and has served in many roles including as patrol trooper, burglary suppression unit investigator, 

DPS Training Academy instructor, major crime Sergeant, child abuse investigation Sergeant, technical 

crimes unit Sergeant and is currently assigned to the recruitment unit.

Finally, Fannie Black will be our last presenter. Fannie is currently the Director of Programs for the Yuut 

Learning Center in Bethel, Alaska where she coordinates the Village and Tribal Police Officer Training 

Academy. Fannie was raised in Bethel and prior to her current position she worked for the National 

Indian Child Welfare Association and Northwest Health Foundation. Each presenter will have about 15 

minutes to speak and at the conclusion of the presentations there will be ample opportunity for 

questions and answers. Anytime during the webinar you may type in your question into the question 

pane and we'll review and answer them during the question and answer period.

In addition to myself and the panelists, we also have Melissa Harrington and Clara Pesiri from the COPS 

Office, Grant Administration Division with us today to assist with any grant related questions you may 

have. That covers the logistics and introduction to the webinar and now I'd like to turn it over to our first 

presenter, Bob Griffiths. Bob, the floor is yours.

Slide 5 

00:03:47

Bob Griffiths: Thank you Matt, and good day to all of you out there. I want to thank everyone for taking 

the time to participate in our webinar today or to view it later online. You're taking a big step towards 

improving public safety in our communities by assuring only individuals deserving of our trust and 

respect are placed in positions of authority. Police officers are seldom if ever called because life is going 

great. They're usually called in times of crisis, injury, crime or victimization. The officers who do show up 

must be trained properly and capable of appropriate response. Police work is not for everybody and it's 

not just another job. Most career officers would tell you that it's a calling. It's a calling to protect the 

community and its citizens. Sir Robert Peel, who often is referred to as the father of modern policing, 

coined nine principles of policing.

One of these was, “the police are the public and the public are the police. The police being only 

members of the public who are paid to do full time attention to the duties which are incumbent on 

every citizen in the best interests of the community's welfare and existence.” So police officers never or 
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very seldom ever solve crimes just by themselves. The true crime fighting, the true community 

protection, is a team effort and the effort relies upon the active participation of other members of the 

community.

Police may be key members of the team, but the rest of the team, our community residents and other 

officials, must participate to effectively enforce the law. Police officers must earn and maintain the 

respect of the other team members, their community. That was another one of Peel's principles. Our 

American judicial system was founded on the principle that all suspects are innocent unless proven 

guilty. To prove guilt requires the police officers bear witness in court to what they saw, what they 

heard and did during an investigation. To protect victims and carry out justice by convicting an offender 

in court, the judge and jury must believe the officer's testimony.

The courts and members of the jury must respect the officer and find that he has integrity and he can be 

believed; an officer who lacks integrity or that the community feels lacks integrity, cannot effectively do 

their job. Whether we like it or not, we must be able to defend our decisions as being lawful, just and 

based on sound principles of fairness. When we make arbitrary decisions based on personal bias or 

ignore obvious risks, disregard rules, regulations, policies, procedures or fail to do our due diligence in 

hiring and training and supervising others we subject ourselves and our organization to personal and 

agency liability.

Unfortunately, to protect ourselves and our organizations, we must conduct and document competent 

background investigations or background checks on our officers. In the dark ages of policing cops were 

regarded as brutish, uncaring, authoritarian enforcers of law who maintained order through instilling 

fear in the population. Fortunately, police work began to become a profession beginning as back as the 

early 1800s in Sir Robert Peel's time. However, police professionalism did not truly gain full momentum 

until the mid 1960s. Following Congress's passage of the Law Enforcement Assistance Act in 1965.

Across America, states adopted minimum hiring and training standards and created certifying bodies 

such as the Police Standards Council in Alaska and the federal government sponsored training and 

funded college education of our officers. Now, in 2020, many states require ongoing in service training 

to maintain proficiency and professional certification. Those of us who've dedicated much of our lives to 

this profession want to make certain that we protect its integrity.

Our entire profession is tarnished when one of us violates our oath of office, commits a crime or brutally 

victimizes another. News articles, exposing patterns of disqualified officers being hired by communities 

harms the entire profession and needlessly confounds our officer recruiting and retention efforts. Many 

of you may be receiving grant funds to hire and train officer. Having managed federal grants in the past. 

I know that the grantee must abide by federal and state law.

For example, in 28CFR-3207, which is part of the Indian Child Protection and Family Violence Prevention 

Act of 1990 there are certain criminal offenses that disqualify an individual from being placed in any 

position where they would have regular contact or control over Native children. Certainly tribal officers 

will be placed in a position like this.
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Slide 6 

00:09:00 

Bob Griffiths: So Yogi Berra, the famous New York Yankee once quipped, “if you don't know where 

you're going, you might end up somewhere else.” 

Most of you represent communities or organizations where you're looking to hire officers, perhaps even 

start your own criminal justice agency. It's critical that everyone involved in that effort understand 

where you're headed and what the goals are. Presumably the goals include a safer community being 

policed by trained officers who are respected by most of the community because of their integrity and 

fair treatment of others. It is critical in this process that you establish minimum qualifications for those 

you want to hire for those positions of trust. Take the time to document and share minimum 

qualifications and standards you set before beginning your hiring. If your qualifications have some 

bonafide relationship to the job requirements, they're easily defensible.

If you must eliminate an applicant for past conduct or for not meeting those qualifications, it's much 

simpler to defend that position if you have the qualifications written and published. Consider publishing 

minimum qualifications as part of your job announcements during recruiting efforts, et cetera. Most 

common qualifications are citizenship, age, education, literacy, physical abilities, lack of drug use, and 

lack of disqualifying criminal convictions. If you'd like examples of these, the Police Standards Council 

has standards setup for village police officers who we certify. You are free to use those, modify them, 

adapt them or adopt them however you'd like to do it. Just simply contact me and I'll make sure you get 

a copy of those.

Slide 7

00:10:42 

Bob Griffiths: As discussed in the last slide; As we begin evaluating a perspective officer and assessing 

their suitability, You first set your criteria, then you must gather information from the applicant that will 

allow you to assess if they are a good fit. Because a background investigation involves gathering 

information about a person from many sources, we must first obtain their written authorization to do 

so. This is usually done as part of the job application process. If you obtain a written application and 

signed waivers of release of information forms, or ROIs as we refer to them, this will allow you to get 

that information. Sergeant Willson will be going into more detail. Your job application process should 

include personal history questions that address things like personal references.

These would include your former domestic partners, family members, as well as friends and associates. 

We want to look at residence and employment history. We know that past job performance is a strong 

indicator of future performance and attention to detail. Former landlords, roommates and neighbors 

can provide information about the applicant's personal responsibility and their respect for others. 

Criminal history questions are also important. Please understand that most applicants have had prior 

police contact and many have had prior arrests at one time or another. This should not be an automatic 

disqualifier. If it were, quite frankly, we'd have very few police officers in Alaska.
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It's only certain convictions that automatically disqualify a candidate. Generally speaking, we're looking 

for candidates who openly admit their mistakes and have learned from them. On the other hand, if they 

omit prior police contact, arrests or convictions from their applications, can they really be trusted to be 

honest as an employee? If you set your job qualifications properly, evaluating if a person's criminal 

history might disqualify them should be a relatively simple process. If you wish, APSC has a suitable form 

that you could use for the purposes of gathering this information. We actually have two forms; for most 

applications or most positions we certify in Alaska, we have a very extensive F3 form, we refer to it as a 

Personal History Statement.

This comprehensive form is designed for the state and the municipal officers and our state corrections 

officers. For most of your purposes, though, we recommend that you use or consider using our F3 for 

village police officer applicants only. This form is much easier to complete. It's much shorter and it 

should meet your needs. We found that in rural settings when possible, it's often worthwhile to sit down 

with an applicant and help them fill out their application. This is often something new to them and 

gentle guidance, encouragement, and clarification about some questions can result in a far more 

complete application. A retired police chief from Nome once shared with me that if he helped an 

applicant interpret and complete his personal history questionnaire as part of the hiring process, he had 

more than halfway completed his background investigation by the time the paperwork was done.

When the applicant has completed their application, it should be reviewed for completeness and any 

obviously disqualifying information. The next slide will provide you with some resources you can use for

this purpose.

Slide 8

00:14:06

Bob Griffiths: So the Alaska Police Standards Council, APSC, can provide you some advice and support 

even if the officers you're hiring do not fall within our jurisdiction, such as tribal officers.

If you're hiring a city or a village officer, then you should coordinate with us and document your actions 

with the appropriate forms. Our website includes a User's Guide that you might find helpful. One free 

resource that we rely here on a daily basis is the Alaska Court Systems online Court View public records 

system. While you cannot find out-of-state matters on the system, you can find nearly every Alaska 

court action a person has ever been involved in. Look yourself up sometime. I know I’m in there.

Many of your communities, maybe members of the Alaska Municipal League or the AML. AML provides 

services to its members and very low cost services to other communities. You may wish to consider 

using them to conduct a background investigation on your behalf. The Joint Insurance Agency of the 

Alaska Municipal League or as we refer to it, AML-JIA, is a membership-based insurance pool for Alaska 

communities. AMLJIA routinely does background investigations for its members because it helps the 

insurance pool reduce their exposure to liability. If your community or group is a member of AMLJIA 

consider asking them for help. Thank you so much for your time and good luck on all you do and I'll now 

hand this off to Sergeant Willson. Thank you.
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Slide 9

00:15:36

Sgt. Dave Willson: Good morning. First of all, I wanted to thank those who are attending and listening in 

for the work that you're going to be doing. This is important work and we need good people who are 

dedicated to do it well. So, let's dive right into the concepts we'd like you to consider when conducting a 

background investigation. First of all, as most people can understand when we're doing a background 

investigation, the reason, the basic reason we're doing one is because we believe that past behavior is 

the best indicator of future behavior. Employment decisions are very important. We look at people and 

we hope that they will do excellent work for us in the job, but we have to do our due diligence and make 

sure that they're qualified for the position and able to perform well, especially in a job that's as 

important as public safety.

And the way we do that is we look at what their skills and abilities have been in the past and how 

they've performed in similar circumstances. And if they haven't done police work before, then it's very 

difficult to do that. So we've got to be very careful about how we look at the background information 

and make judgements about how they're likely to perform in the future. And that decision, in the end is 

made by an impartial decision maker and the background investigator through the process should try 

and eliminate any bias they have and look for evidence, look for the evidence of what the behavior has 

been in the past in relevant situations.

So that's kind of the big concept that a background investigators should have at the forefront of their 

mind is to find evidence that shows how their past behavior and similar situations was conducted so 

that the final decision maker can make the determination about whether or not they do well on this job, 

and whether or not they meet the minimum qualifications that you've set forward for the position.

Slide 10

00:17:14 

Sgt. Dave Willson: So, these are the lists in broad generalities about what should be considered in the 

steps of a background investigation. There should be some sort of application and APSC provides a 

couple options with the two variants of the F3. They’re an excellent starting place.

And a physical fitness test. We're going to talk about the importance of a physical fitness test that when 

you're doing an application process, you want to make sure that people meet minimum qualifications. 

You have to be able to test those things. And physical fitness is one of those things we recommend that 

you test. An oral board interview, very important aspect of the application process and some sort of 

screening. Psychological and polygraph screening is very commonly used in police employment 

screening and very useful for the reasons we'll talk about shortly.

And then finally, the final hire approval should be made from an impartial decision maker. Someone 

separate from the actual person conducting the background investigation. So, let's look at the reasons 

for the application. 
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Slide 11

00:18:09

Sgt. Dave Willson: Okay. So there's a couple of big reasons why we want to see an application in really 

any sort of employment, particularly though with a public safety position, when you have an individual 

who's tasked with public safety in rural areas, quite often they're operating by themselves. So they don't 

have the advantage of working in big teams that you find in larger municipal departments where if one 

person makes a mistake, the person next to them may be overseeing that and say, "Hey, you forgot to 

do this thing or that thing."

So as a kind of solo operator with little or no support, it's very, very important for the applicant to have 

demonstrated excellent attention to detail. Much of what law enforcement officers do is document 

things, look for evidence, and if they don't find something, then that might be an attention to detail 

issue, but it's even worse if they find something and fail to document. So attention to detail is a very 

important characteristic in law enforcement work and an application is an initial, pretty much the first 

chance, that a background investigator, potential employer gets to look at that demonstrates an 

applicant's attention to detail.

How well was the information placed on the form according to the directions there, were all the blanks 

filled in correctly, were they legible? Was there adequate explanation for any inappropriate behaviors 

that were mentioned in there? Absolutely essential that you measure attention to detail. The

application is the first chance to do it, but if you don't have an application then you don't have a chance 

to actually gauge this quality and it's very, very important that you'd be able to evaluate this in the 

application process. 

Also, of course it gives you a starting place for an investigation. When you conduct the investigation, one 

would think, well what do we do? Well like we've mentioned before, you're trying to measure previous 

performance in similar situations in order to guess whether or not they'll perform well in this job and 

how do you do that? Well, you need to contact people who've got evidence, personal contact, 

employment related contacts, supervisors and coworkers that have had experience with this individual 

and can give you a good assessment of the capabilities in these areas.

And the application is where the applicant will put down that information, contact information of 

significant others, supervisors, coworkers and personal references they'll put down education, history 

and residence history and of course the contact information for those institutions so that you can 

actually confirm the information placed on an investigation.

Slide 12

00:20:35 

Sgt. Dave Willson: The physical fitness test. Physical fitness is an essential requirement for the job of law 

enforcement officer. While the vast majority of contacts in police work are of a non-physical nature, and 

the vast majority involve communication skills and documenting things in general, problem solving, 

deterrent presence.
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Unfortunately, sometimes physical fitness does come into play when arrests are made or intervention 

has to be taken in order to protect another individual or the police officer themselves. So physical 

fitness is a basic job function and those basic job functions need to be assessed during the application 

process. The way that it's generally done, is there some sort of physical fitness standard established by 

the hiring entity and that applicant must meet that physical fitness standard? There are lots of resources 

available for what those standards might look like.

And also there are many resources online for other police agencies and what their physical fitness 

standards are and it's pretty well accepted that if they're not capable of handling the physical 

requirements of the job then they're not going to perform well in the position and that's going to lead to 

problems for the community. Additionally, physical fitness does something more than just maintain the 

requirements of the job and the functions of the job. It's simply good for the officer who's in the 

position. It reduces the incidence of injury due to off duty problems, respond quickly to recovering from 

injury or sickness, ability to make good judgment decisions, and the ability to act quickly with confidence 

in critical situations.

We don't like to use deadly force in law enforcement. And of course, we want to protect the public, all 

of the public whenever possible. And when an officer is physically fit and able to use good judgment and 

act well in a critical situation, they are able to respond in ways other than using deadly force quite often, 

which we'd definitely want to see. And of course it provides an excellent relief from stress. When law 

enforcement officers are contacting multiple people in the course of the day who are not having a good 

day, generally people don't call for law enforcement officers to be on a scene unless something's gone 

wrong.

And when that happens multiple times over the course of a day, a law enforcement officer can have a 

significant amount of vicarious trauma that builds up, and we want to see healthy coping mechanisms 

for those kinds of difficult days. And getting on a treadmill or doing some pushups or going on a run is 

definitely an excellent coping mechanism, far better than some of the unhealthy coping mechanisms 

that sometimes creep into any sort of stressful individuals lifestyle after hours. So, we definitely want to 

have physical fitness be one of those good choices.

Slide 13

00:23:16 

Sgt. Dave Willson: The oral board interview. Oral board interview is a commonly used practice in law 

enforcement screening for a couple of different reasons.

First of all, as I mentioned before, law enforcement officers spend most of their day communicating with 

the public, talking to people, whether it's to gather information about something that may have been an 

alleged criminal offense, perhaps it's a civil problem, perhaps it's something that's developing in an 

urgent emergent situation. Getting those communication skills into our law enforcement officers 

toolbox is very, very important. And one of the most critical things that we advise potential applicants 

on is if you want to be a law enforcement officer, it's great to be in shape. It's great to have all kinds of 
9 

police related interests and even education. But the most important thing is to develop the 

communication skill. Most of what police officers do is talk to people and then write it down in a police 

report. And in there, there should be good listening skills as well.

Those listening skills are essential at ascertaining the perspective of the public of the complaint in a case, 

et cetera. So how in the background investigation process can we measure communication skills? Well, 

an oral board interview is an excellent way to do that because it entails multiple people often. 

Sometimes it's just one, but often multiple people in a board situation asking questions of the applicant 

that they didn't know in advance. So they have to deal with a question coming from someone that 

maybe they haven't even met before asking about some job related scenario or experience.

We'd like to see behavior based questions on these oral boards where they're asking the applicant, tell 

us about a time when this happened or tell us about an example of when this sort of thing happened. 

What'd you learn from it? How does that apply to the job you're doing now? How would that apply to 

your employment with our agency or our village or our tribe? How would your experience make you 

qualify for this position sort of thing. Those verbal skills are measured in this process because they have 

to listen to a question so that you test those listening skills. Sometimes the question is in multiple parts.

So sometimes the employer will provide a tablet with paper and a pen so they can write down the 

question, measuring their ability to take notes, which is important in law enforcement work. And then 

they'll consider the question and, develop a response and articulate that, and that's very important for 

their ability. Measuring the ability that o communicate with the public. Eventually perhaps their ability 

to testify in a court setting or they're asked questions and have to answer. So this is an excellent 

measure of communication skills in a critical scenario.

And it also helps assess an applicant's ability to use these communication skills in a stressful 

environment, which is really what law enforcement work is. When we get a call to go to a scene, to deal 

with a problem, often things are not going well. And that's why the law enforcement officer's called to 

the scene. So to go there and then have to exhibit these communication skills in a stressful environment. 

Well, that's really kind of what the oral board is because that's one of the things that we've found in the 

application process that is most challenging for an applicant is their fear of going before an oral board.

It's not something that people practice very often. They might do a lot of pushups in practicing for a 

physical fitness test, but they don't encounter situations similar to an oral board where they have 

people asking them questions in an environment like that, that they have to give answers to. That stress 

that it measures will show you how this applicant performs in a stressful situation when they're required 

to speak. And that is an excellent barometer for their ability to adapt to the job of a law enforcement 

officer where they're often under stress and have to exhibit those communication skills.

And that's really what a background investigation is part of, is how well did they do these sorts of things. 

To see if someone who's applying for a job is capable of performing the job. You want to mimic those 

sorts of tests in the application process, that will give you the information necessary for that final 

decision maker to make the choice about whether or not the applicant will be successful.
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Slide 14

00:27:20 

Sgt. Dave Willson: Next step is a polygraph psychological screen. Not every law enforcement agency 

provides a polygraph screening. Some use other methods of detecting deception.

Some do not use a method of detecting deception in the process. The vast majority in my experience, do 

however, use a psychological screening and these are the reasons why that these are an excellent step 

to consider in your investigation process. First of all, when there is some sort of deception tests in the 

course of the process and the applicant knows that ahead of time.

The utility of having that is that the applicant notes that the information they put on the application is 

going to be tested not just by a background investigator who's looking to verify that information, but 

ultimately by a polygraph or perhaps a voice stress analysis or other detection method to test the 

validity of the information they put down on there that encourages the applicant to be truthful and 

application in the first place and helps improve the quality of the information that's put down on that 

application.

The psychological screening is an excellent way of determining if someone has the basic qualities 

necessary to handle a stressful job like this. One of the most difficult things to do is to take someone 

who might be performing very well in a job and decide whether or not they would do well in a police 

profession. It's really hard to find professions that mimic the stress that is encountered by police officers 

on a daily basis. And so one of the ways we do that as we lean on professionals who have gathered lots 

and lots of data through psychological written screenings and applied that to police officers on duty and 

determined what kinds of answers and responses on these written tests often are associated with 

people who performed well on the job and those who didn't perform well on the job.

You don't always know why an answer to certain questions leads to certain sorts of performances on the 

job, but they do have these very close associations with some excellent statistics and we and other 

agencies have found that it's an excellent determiner of on the job performance. Also, whether or not 

someone is likely to have misconduct on the job. So the screening of a psychological professional is 

absolutely essential in making good decisions in this regard. Fortunately, what seemed to be a difficult 

thing in rural areas of Alaska nowadays with the technology that's available, it can all be done over the

internet through a written test that's really not a written test.

It's actually performed on a computer and then the information is submitted to the psychological 

screening agency and then an interview is conducted much like this webinar with a visual and audio 

teleconference with the doctor. Generally the process is, the test itself is a few hours, two to three 

hours on the computer. That information is then transmitted to the agency and the interview is 

scheduled and the doctor has an interview to corroborate the data that they get and talk to those 

applicants in person through the computer.

And that takes usually less than an hour. If you're interested in providing psychological screening, the 

costs have gotten quite reasonable and there are a number of agencies that can provide that through 

the teleconference method and Mr. Griffiths said APSC has information on who you can contact to 
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consider that step. I highly recommend both a polygraph and psychological screening, but if you can't do 

both, I definitely recommend you do the psychological screening and it's excellent for determining 

suitability. 

Slide 15

00:30:51 

Sgt. Dave Willson: Let's look at trends. This is an important reminder for the background investigator to 

look at what prior performance has been conducted by this applicant, and how that might relate to the 

actual job. Remember past behavior’s likely to predict future behavior.

And really that's all we have to go on as an employer is how well have they performed in similar 

situations in the past. It's very risky to take someone who has performed poorly in a similar situation in 

the past. And it's also very risky to take and hire someone when you have no measure whatsoever of 

how they performed in a similar situation.

So, close scrutiny of these areas is very important. So the first one there listed is law enforcement 

officers hold a position of power. So the natural question would be, "How have they done in previous 

situations where they've held a position of power?” Have they been in a position of power in the 

domestic relationship? And has there been domestic violence in that relationship? Regardless of 

whether or not any charges arose from it. That's something to consider in the application process as to 

whether or not there are allegations or evidence of domestic violence. How about in a supervisory role 

when a, an applicant has had power over somebody else in the workplace that's very similar to when 

they have power over someone in the public who asks for help or is at a scene when they respond.

A law enforcement officer has more power over other individuals acting in their job role, and so we 

need to evaluate how well have they handled those positions of power in the past? How about 

leadership roles in the community? Very important to discuss what has this person done when they had 

power over someone else. Have they been judicious in the use of that power or have they misused it? 

Very important consideration there. Also, emotional situations, how well have they handled emotional 

situations?

Do they have experience responding to scenes as a first responder, an EMT, medical professional, 

something that measures how well they can handle when people are going through very difficult 

circumstances, and maybe experienced even some physical trauma. Have they been able to act 

responsibly, and as a leader in that situation? Managing crises, have they exhibited good self-control? 

Can they stay even keeled and calm a scene well? And they speak in a fashion that brings people to a 

lower state of stress rather than a higher one.

And self-discipline and how well they plan. Very, very important. What are their personal finances like? 

While it's not a make or break minimum qualification sort of stuff. It's really important to think what has 

this person done when they've had power financially? Have they been able to meet their commitments, 

tell themselves “ no” when they want something but can't afford it. Personal finances are an excellent 

indicator of long-term planning and self-discipline, both of which are very important in law enforcement 

work.
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You have to maintain training and fitness levels. And you have to make good decisions and think about 

long-term consequences, and that's all very important to evaluate. Prior job performance is absolutely 

essential. Contact supervisors, contact coworkers, ask if they're the kind of individual who came in early, 

and stayed late and was willing to work on their days off. Because a public safety officer's job is really 

pretty much 24/7, every day of the week. They need to be the kind of individual who performs well even 

when it's not the normal work day. And of course self-discipline is demonstrated in their physical fitness 

level as well.

Slide 16 

00:34:09

Sgt. Dave Willson: The final hiring decision should be made by an entity or a group of people that are 

separate from the background investigator themselves. Here's why. As a background investigator goes 

through the process of learning about an applicant and testing the information that's placed on the 

application and administering the different steps it's very easy for someone to form an opinion about 

that person based on the information that's gathered, and that might be a good opinion that creates a 

bias wanting to hire the person. Or it could be a negative opinion that creates a bias not wanting to hire 

the person.

The hiring decisions should always be made on evidence gathered. And that not just eliminates some 

potential liability in the process, but allows the leader who's detached from the situation to have full 

control over the situation and the hiring process without being biased certainly in one way or the other. 

That doesn't serve the interests of the entity making the decision. You got to have someone charged to 

make that final call who didn't do the background investigation. Certainly they will do so based on 

recommendations by the background investigator. But those recommendations would certainly be 

made based on evidence that was gathered in the background process.

So it's really important to insulate the different steps of the process as much as possible. The 

investigation is separate from the hiring decision. Investigation is to determine suitability based on 

evidence that's gathered and whether or not the individual meets those minimum qualifications. But the 

background investigators should not make the hiring decision.

Slide 17

00:35:46

Sgt. Dave Willson: We'll turn over to the next person Fannie.

Fannie Black: Thank you all for joining us today. I'm going to be giving just a brief background on Yuut 

Elitnaurviat and our programs and then we'll focus specifically on public safety. But Yuut has been 

around since 2002, providing training in our region, and we're going to be celebrating our 20 year 

anniversary pretty soon, but our mission is to train people to fill a lot of jobs that we have here in Bethel 

and the surrounding communities.
13

Slide 18

00:36:11

Fannie Black: Here sits our campus. It's a one acre campus right, right outside of city sub and Bethel. We 

provide housing, cafeteria for all of our students. So all of our students are able to stay on our campus, 

and all their needs can be met here on campus. And for public safety specifically, all of those students, 

regardless of where they live, even if they're local to Bethel, are required to stay on our facilities, simply 

because our VPO academies run almost like a boot camp. Your days start pretty early and go into the 

evening. And we also want to make sure that our students aren't distracted by anything else going on in 

the community.

Slide 19

00:36:47

Fannie Black: So Yuut has six different program departments: adult education, aviation maintenance, 

construction trades, driver education, healthcare and public safety. While we have students here, and it 

doesn't matter what training they're here for, we do stress the importance of getting a driver's license. 

So for our public safety students, our last cohort of students, we actually had two students out of that 

class get their driver's license. So being able to drive in your community if you have roads, can be very 

important if you have to respond to incidents throughout the day. And any other programs, if students 

need help with improving their reading or improving their math, regardless of what program they're in, 

we do provide those services as well to them.

Slide 20

00:37:33 

Fannie Black: So our VPO academies are anywhere from 15 days for our VPO/TPO Academy. And our 

advanced academies are 10 days. The VPO/TPO academies altogether cost $6,600. So it's $4,500 for 

tuition, $2,100 for room and board. This does not include travel expenses for airfare. So that's 

something to consider as well if you plan on attending our academies. For those of you receiving COPS 

grants, some of you will be able to use your training funding to pay for this. For those that do not have a 

training line item in their budgets, the Association of Village Council Presidents does provide financial 

aid to cadets that live within the Bethel area.

So whether you're from Bethel or a surrounding village, you can apply for a scholarship from that 

organization. For those organizations outside of the Bethel region, your local tribe, your city or your 

corporation can help provide financial support to attend. One of the requirements, we do have a 

number of requirements for the VPO and TPO academies, we do require a high school diploma. As 

Sergeant Willson mentioned, communication is very important in public safety. So being able to have 

effective verbal and written communication skills is very important to public safety in documenting 

incidents. So that is one of the requirements we have for attending any of the trainings here at Yuut. We 

do require a high school diploma or GED.

We also do background checks for TPOs, Tribal Police Officers. We use court view, the state database to 

check up people's criminal histories. For Village Police Officers, they are required to go through a 

background check, they have to provide fingerprints and then those are submitted to the Alaska Police 
14

Standards Council along with their applications. So TPO applications are a pretty short, quick application, 

for Village Police Officers though there are additional attachments required, the F2, F3 and F4 forms 

provided by the Alaska Police Standards Council. And those applications actually get submitted to and 

vetted by the Police Standards Council and not by Yuut.

Slide 21

00:39:45

Fannie Black: Along with the training, we also provide equipment to each of the cadets that come to our 

training. We provide uniforms including BDUs, shirts, pants, a jacket, caps along with boots, tactical belts 

and OCS and the carrier. So we provide mace to all of the cadets, a baton and a holster, handcuffs and a 

handcuff case, a flashlight and a flashlight holder, digital camera and recorder, and a notebook for the 

reports. So all cadets leave fully equipped, and with these things to provide public safety in their village.

Slide 22

00:40:23

Fannie Black: So some of the topics that we provide training on, we do a little bit of fire safety training. 

This does not prepare anyone to become a firefighter, but we do teach students how to operate a fire 

extinguisher. They do actually put out a small fire in a contained area. We do talk about protective 

equipment when responding to a fire. We do not provide students with protective equipment, but they 

do know exactly what they'll need if they have to respond to a fire in their community. We also provide 

medic first aid, CPR training, and also operating an AED device. So in case you have to jump start 

someone's heart, we also have some training on that. You learn how to do chest compressions. So if you 

are arriving on a scene with an unconscious person, you will know how to respond to that situation.

We also give training on Miranda rights on arresting, when and where you can arrest, and report 

writing. This is one very important aspect of our application process as well. We not only incorporate an 

over the phone interview to assess someone's oral communication skills, but we also ask for a small 

writing sample as part of the application, so that we can assess their writing skills as well. We also talk 

about patrol procedures and rural DUI procedures.

Slide 23

00:41:39

Fannie Black: Some other topics that we go over in the training are evidence procedures. We talk about 

search and rescue, criminal codes, criminal complaints, search and seizure, interview techniques, crime 

scene investigation, and some of these topics that we go over actually use real life examples and create 

scenarios to where you might be entering a crime scene, and how do you assess the crime scene, 

making sure that you're not tampering with any evidence in the crime scene. All the cadets go through 

these role play scenarios, so that when they go back to their communities, they'll have at least had some 

experience dealing with crime scenes, and will know how to respond to different crime scenes that they 

might come across.
15

Slide 24

00:42:19

Fannie Black: We also talk about use of force. All of the cadets do some hand-to-hand combat so they 

know how to respond to someone who might be physically violent. Talk about using batons, how you're 

supposed to use batons to potentially get a violent person to calm down, some defensive tactics so they 

can respond to any violent people that they may come across, along with the mace. All the cadets get 

maced so that they know exactly what they're doing to someone if they have to mace somebody.

We also talk about juvenile procedures. Talk about mental subjects, people that might have mental 

health issues, how you respond to situations where there may be somebody with a mental health issue 

and domestic violence as well. A lot of these, again, we create scenarios so that we have some role 

playing. So all of the cadets will get some experience handling these situations, and our trainers use real 

life situations to train our cadets. Our lead trainer is a retired state trooper who worked in this region for 

20 years. He brings along with him other retired VPOs or VPSOs or people who are currently working as 

a VPO or VPSO in a village, in this region.

So a lot of the scenario is that they're bringing to the training are scenarios that a lot of our cadets may 

face when they return back to their communities. Our next training is going to be in May. May 28 to 

June 12, our applications are available on our website. If you do a search on Google for Yuut Public 

Safety, we should be the first thing that pops up on the search. And if you have any questions about any 

of the trainings, how to get signed up, feel free to give me a call, or an email so we can get you signed up 

for our upcoming training. We do provide these trainings twice a year, once in the fall and once in the 

late spring, we do these trainings.

And they are available not only to people within the Bethel, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region, but to 

people throughout the state. So we have had public security officers, land security officers, school 

security officers attend our trainings. So it's not only available to VPOs and TPOs. Any public safety 

officer's able to attend our trainings. And funding, if you have questions about funding, that is 

something we can also talk about. Our training, all these topics that we go over, our topics you will see 

at any police academy throughout the country. It is a shortened version of police academy training so 

you don't get to touch on all the topics that are provided. But our lead trainer has specifically picked 

these topics based on his experience working in this region, and working in rural policing for over 20 

years.

Video Q&A Slide, Slide 25

00:44:56

Matt Lysakowski: Great. Thank you Fannie and thank you Sergeant Willson and thank you Bob as well for 

that wonderful presentation. I think that was a great comprehensive overview of background 

investigations, and the training opportunities that are available for TPOs and VPOs in Alaska. We're now 

going to begin our question and answer session.
16

Question 1, Slide 26

00:45:14 

Matt Lysakowski: We had our first question come in and the question is related to I believe, 

psychological screening. So I think Sergeant Willson, the question is in general about the psychological 

screening aspect, I think. So if you could maybe talk for another minute or two about that particular 

screening criteria and it's importance that would be, appreciated.

Sgt. Dave Willson (00:45:35): The psychological screening. It's generally not meant to determine if 

there's undiagnosed mental illness or something like that. It's meant to determine suitability for the 

particular job stressors and job challenges associated with law enforcement work. So it's measuring 

decision making and recent inappropriate behaviors and risk taking. And the kinds of things that when 

you get down to the weeds make up why we do the things we do and how we react in stressful 

situations. And you know, that's, that's kind of a mixed bag, because it's very difficult to guess based on 

what someone writes down in a computer survey and how they're going to do well as a law 

enforcement officer.

And so the way they did that is they gathered a huge group of data from a lot of different law 

enforcement officer applicants, and then track those applicants into law enforcement jobs, and were 

able to determine correlations between the answer to a certain way on the written test and how they 

performed a certain way in the job later. And so those correlations are how the statisticians do their 

magic. And I am not a statistician nor am I a psychologist. But the way I understand it is they're able to 

get very, very good information to be predictive, meaning be able to make predictions about someone's 

behavior, based on the written examination portion of it. And the interview when conducted with the 

psychologist before making those determinations.

So when you're hiring someone, especially someone who doesn't have a lot of work history, it's very, 

very difficult to decide are they going to be good at this job. And when you're putting someone in a 

position where they have power over your friends and neighbors and the citizens of the area you're 

trying to protect, you want to make sure they're going to do a good job and they're going to protect 

them and not prey on them. And unfortunately in law enforcement, sometimes we've had people, 

wolves among the sheep and we absolutely cannot have that.

We need to do everything we can and show our commitment to public safety by picking people who are 

going to do a good job and going to protect our citizens. And so the psychological screening is excellent. 

An excellent tool, especially for people who don't have a lot of information in their background from 

what you can draw conclusions on how well they'll do in the job.
17

Question 2, Slide 27

00:47:47

Matt Lysakowski: Thanks. Sergeant Willson, there was a follow-up to that question about whether there 

is a fee for the webinar, psychological screening that you talked about. I think you talked about the 

teleconference type of opportunities that might be available for this type of screening. And I don't know 

if you know, if there are fees for that type of service, but Bob might be able to speak to that. That could 

be helpful.

Sgt. Dave Willson (00:48:07): Yes, certainly. We employ a company and the costs range depending on 

the companies that you're employing. And perhaps even on the number of applications to go through. 

So I can't speak specifically what it would cost to do. I know that the range is often between three 

hundred and five hundred dollars. But it's going to be depending on the services and the company that's 

providing it, but that's certainly a lot cheaper than even sometimes a plane ticket to go to more 

populated area for an applicant and hotel, et cetera. We think it's a bargain and we've been very, very 

happy with the under $500 psychological screening rates that are often out there.

Matt Lysakowski (00:48:39): Great. Thanks Sergeant.

Bob Griffiths (00:48:40): Just to add one thing there, Matt. This is a test that's administered to someone 

after you've decided to hire them before they started work. But you're offering this kind of a last 

screening tool to make sure that they're a good fit. You don't give this to every applicant. You do it after 

you've done your investigation, and you determine that from what you've found in your background 

investigation, it looks like they're a good fit. And so this is kind of the last final thing that you want to do 

before you hire them.

Question 3, Slide 28

00:49:10 

Matt Lysakowski: Great. Thank you Bob. We had another question come in, and I'll read this one. Under 

the COPS grant, will the training under the Yuut be acceptable to hire a public safety officer? So I believe 

the question there is asking whether under the COPS grant program, the training at the Yuut center is 

acceptable as the required training. And yes, it is acceptable for the required training under the grant 

program. It's one of the great opportunities to provide, as Fannie described, that sort of abbreviated 

training academy, in a format that is similar to what a participant would experience in a full, lengthier 

academy.

And given the situation in rural Alaska certainly, the Yuut training center is a great opportunity for 

potential officers to attend.
18

Question 4, Slide 29

00:49:57

Matt Lysakowski: There was another question has come in about, is this webinar being recorded and if 

we could get a DVD copy of this training. The webinar is being recorded and it's going to be available on 

the COPS Office website. And we can also figure out a way to get a DVD out to the questionnaire that 

asked about the DVD option for the webinar as well.

Question 5, Slide 30

00:50:19

Matt Lysakowski: Another question has come in and I'll read this one. What steps would you 

recommend for tribes looking to start tribal police forces? Some villages have no local law enforcement 

at all and need feet on the ground to respond. What funding, training or other considerations should 

tribes keep in mind for TPOs? So I think perhaps all the panelists might have some input on this one, 

about what starting a police force might look like in those local villages and the training opportunities. 

So why don't we just start with Bob if you could respond and then we'll go down the line to everyone on 

this one I think.

Bob Griffiths (00:50:52): Well, you're embarking on a pretty ambitious project to start your own criminal 

justice agency within a tribal organization. First off, I think that you have to have a strong tribal 

governance, and you must look to the tribal governors, your council, to adopt council regulations, or 

laws that you can enforce within your community. Certainly they can adopt the state statutes if they 

want to, or they can take some other similar kind of actions to prohibit certain conduct that you don't 

want committed within your community.

But first you have to have that set of rules that you're going to enforce. And then you need to find a 

strong leader that you can bring on board, that can take charge of developing and implementing a 

criminal justice agency within the community. Then you'll finally, you'll need some sort of adjudication 

process for any offender that may be nabbed by your TPOs. You need to have some sort of a process for 

addressing that conduct, and making sure it doesn't continue. So I'll pass it on to anyone else who wants 

to take it.

Sgt. Dave Willson (00:51:56): Sure. I'll jump in there. Whenever embarking on a project that you haven't 

done before, I think it's very prudent to lean on the understanding of people who have done it before 

and have found success with it. So looking at similar communities that have already developed a 

program like this, and have encountered some of the pitfalls and problems that come with standing up 

something brand new, would be a great way of, learning what to do and what not to do, and get some 

shortcuts there so you're not reinventing the wheel. An establish organization with an advisor, there 

that has information about what it's like to be doing public safety work in rural areas, and they've 

established their training program for reasons.
19

And the curriculum that's there that's been approved by COPS is an excellent way to, you know, pattern 

what you need to start. Thinking about what to expect from your public safety agency that you're 

creating. So, in general terms, lean on people who've already been there and done that. And you'll get 

things started a lot better and without encountering all the problems that people often encounter when 

the try and invent things for the first time themselves.

Fannie Black (00:53:00): So the only thing I want to add is to attend the Yuut Public Safety trainings, you 

have to already be hired as a TPO or VPO. So you have to already have an established Public Safety 

program in your community to attend our trainings, because your supervisor has to sign off on your 

application, which in some cases has been the tribal council president. If you are in the AVCP region here 

in Southwest Alaska, they also have a public safety department that can be a good resource for you if 

you need to start a Public Safety program in your region.

Matt Lysakowski (00:53:33): Okay, great. And I just wanted to also add as far as resources go, the COPS 

Office has the Tribal Resources Grant Program, which is part of the Coordinated Tribal Assistance 

Solicitation in the Department of Justice. And that program provides officer salary and benefits, as well 

as equipment and training costs for the department. So that is an opportunity for resources from the 

Department of Justice as well. And then I'll also mention on our website, C-O-P-S-dot-U-S-D-O-J-dot-GO-V, there are opportunities for training and technical assistance, whether it's through our online 

training portal for web-based learning or whether it's a request to do in person training or technical 

assistance, particularly through our Collaborative Reform Initiative - Technical Assistance Center where 

you can request technical assistance around starting a department.

You can request assistance for specific issues you might be having, whether it's substance abuse or 

domestic violence. So again, check out our website at C-O-P-S-dot-U-S-D-O-J-dot-G-O-V, and look for the 

resources that we have on there as another opportunity.

Question 6, Slide 31

00:54:36

Matt Lysakowski: We had a couple more questions come in. A follow-up to that last question is about 

opportunities to cross-deputize TPOs with VPOs or city law enforcement. Would that be advisable? I 

don't know if any of the presenters can speak to the possibility of cross-deputization and whether that's 

a viable option in the villages?

Bob Griffiths (00:54:56): Oh, I'll jump in there. That is a very complicated question and it's one that's 

being addressed across the street from me in the state legislature right now. However, I think I can point 

to an example, in Alaska where this is being done successfully and that is in Metlakatla. Now admittedly, 

and Metlakatla is a different kind of tribal entity in Alaska than most of the others, but they have 

adopted and reached an agreement with the state of Alaska that allows their officers to not only be 

tribal law enforcement officers, but also be certified Alaska police officers.
20

They attend the full academy, they get the full training curriculum and they're certified by my agency. 

They're the only ones in the state that do that. But that doesn't mean that it might not be a viable 

alternative for other organizations to explore. And we're always open to that kind of discussion and 

dialogue.

Matt Lysakowski (00:55:51): Thanks Bob.

Fannie Black (00:55:52): So the only thing I want to add was from what I understand TPOs do not have 

the same kinds of requirements as VPOs as far as background checks go. So in order for something like 

that to work, an organization or a tribe would have to make sure that their TPO standards match VPO 

standards when it comes to background checks and hiring practices. Because I do believe TPOs, their 

criminal history, while we might bar them from attending our training, a tribe sets those standards on 

their own, which might not be as restrictive as a VPO. That's all I wanted to add.

Question 7, Slide 32

00:56:28

Matt Lysakowski: Great. Thank you, Fannie. I think I'll move on to the next question that came in. And 

this one is, did you mention what personnel action reporting is required by APSC. So Bob, this one seems 

like it's up your alley about reporting and I assume they're talking about the VPOs there.

Bob Griffiths (00:56:44): There is going to be a distinction based on the type of position. If you're a tribal 

entity and you're hiring tribal officers, there is no actual mandated reporting to my agency at all. We 

would welcome those reports and we would track them, but they're not required. If you're hiring a 

village officer, which would mean you're in an incorporated city, whether you've got a population of 60, 

or 600, or 5,000 then you're hiring what we either call a Village Police Officer or a municipal police 

officer and those need to be reported to us on what's called an F4, or personnel action form.

So when you hire them, you send us the paperwork that says you hired them and if you have any 

sustained misconduct or serious misconduct or that you terminate the person, or they retire, or hire or 

quit and move on, then you just send us a form so we can track that as well.

Question 8, Slide 33

00:57:35

Matt Lysakowski: Great. Thanks Bob. The next question is do the individuals have to have high school 

diploma to get hired as a VPO?

Bob Griffiths (00:57:43): They do not. They do not require it, but it's interesting that Fannie is saying that 

it's a requirement to attend the academy. So there's a little bit of a disparity there, but our regulations 

do not require that they have a high school diploma.

Fannie Black 00:57:57): And that's something that we do talk about when people apply to our training. 

The reason we've required that was because of the report writing, and the need to have effective oral 

communication skills. We have had cadets come through without high school diplomas and they cannot 

write a report. Our lead trainer has actually asked us to be a little more strict on that. We do make 
21

exceptions to that rule. We have had made exceptions and a lot of those cadets that we have made 

exceptions for, we end up having to send home because the reading level is just not at an adequate level 

to complete the training.

So while we do require it for our training, we will make exceptions in some cases, but it is a question we 

ask of every applicant whether they have a high school diploma or GED and if they don't, those people 

will fall to the bottom of our list of students when we're going through and selecting students to attend 

the class, attend the training.

Question 9, Slide 34

00:58:53 

Matt Lysakowski: Thanks Fannie and Bob for that response. Next question has come in and I'll read it 

out. Since one of the presenters mentioned that we can hire an applicant even if they had a criminal 

history with changes for becoming a better person. My understanding was that we cannot hire anyone 

who has had a criminal history. Is there a form that we use to hire an individual who has had criminal 

history? Bob, are you able to jump in here a little bit?

Bob Griffiths (00:59:24): Certainly I'll be happy to. The requirements that we set in our regulations for 

hiring Village Police Officers are minimum requirements. And those minimum requirements include that 

the person not have been convicted of a felony at any time, and that they've not been convicted of a 

person crime within the past 10 years. We also look at overall history of criminal conduct. A good 

example would be maybe they haven't committed any crimes recently, but they have a pattern of 

assaultive behavior, and alcohol abuse and other related offenses. The bottom line is if they have a 

recent conviction for any assault or related offense, then they're going to be disqualified. And any felony 

or domestic violence offense will disqualify them.

Question 10, Slide 35

01:00:13 

Matt Lysakowski: Great. Thanks Bob. The next question has come in and it's around the hiring process 

and it says, can you clarify that a TPO who is currently working under the tribe cannot be hired under 

the COPS grant. So this one is a little more grant implementation related. So I do know there is a nonsupplanting requirement for the COPS grant so that the grant funds have to be used to supplement the 

existing monies that are allocated to public safety, and the positions that you currently have.

So if you do have someone who is currently functioning as a TPO, they generally would not be able to be 

paid for out of the COPS grant moving forward. You would have to hire a new position in addition to that 

current one that is working. There are some special exceptions. If you're going to be, for instance, laying 

that position off, there could be some discussions around that and what kinds of fiscal distress might be 

going on at your particular Native village or tribe. And I would advise you to reach out to your Grant 

Program Specialist to discuss those issues, if those come up during the implementation period of the 

grant.
22

Question 11, Slide 36

01:01:19

Matt Lysakowski: We had one final question come in around understanding the need to do background 

investigations for hiring public servants, and asking if there was anything that the state could do to help 

with this issue in a FTEP type of training. I'm not familiar with that acronym, but perhaps one of you are 

and asking if we could reach out. So I don't know if any presenters have a response to that, but we can 

definitely reach out to this individual after the webinar, perhaps hook him up with you, Bob or Sergeant 

Willson, about coordinating with the state efforts.

Sgt. Dave Willson (01:01:51): I can speak to that just very briefly. The FTEP is the Field Training and 

Evaluation Program that law enforcement officers go through in order to take their academy training 

and apply it to the job in their environment. And there's a lot of different ways to go about 

administering a Field Training and Evaluation Program and I'm sure that the Alaska State Troopers could. 

you know, give me a call, I could relay those questions to our FTEP coordinator and give them some 

guidance on where they could find resources to help administering their own program.

Matt Lysakowski (01:02:20): Wonderful. Thanks Sergeant Willson.

Final Statements Slide 37

01:02:23 

Matt Lysakowski: I want to give each of the presenters an opportunity to conclude with any final 

remarks they might have. So Bob, if we could start with you on any final remarks that you might have for 

us.

Bob Griffiths (01:02:33): Well, I want to thank everybody for paying attention to this issue and being 

willing to take the steps needed to professionalize public safety in your communities. We're all 

interested and we all have ownership in making sure that rural Alaska has adequate public safety. We're 

dedicated to that. We want to support that. And if you have any needs or questions, if we can be of help 

in any way, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Matt Lysakowski (01:03:01): Great. Thanks Bob and Sergeant Willson. 

Sgt. Dave Willson (01:03:04): Certainly I want to echo Bob's statements about reaching out to us if you 

have any questions at all, we'd be happy to answer those questions, and lend our, our experience to 

you. This is an important job. It's important work, and finding and selecting someone who can protect 

your communities. I mean they're really...I can't think of more important jobs so I know you'll take it 

seriously and do excellent work in finding qualified candidates and we really want to be able to help. So 

please give us a call. You've got our phone numbers and email addresses. Don't try and reinvent the 

wheel like I said before.

Anything difficult, you know, definitely lean on the people who've done a little bit, and your 

circumstances might be very different from ours. But we probably have some things we can share that'll 

make things a lot easier for you and you're not alone in this. You've got allies for sure.
23

Matt Lysakowski (01:03:45): Great. Thank you Sergeant Willson. And finally, Fannie, any final concluding 

comments for you?

Fannie Black (01:03:50): Yeah, public safety affects or touches almost every part of our lives. AN

important aspect of our communities and is very, very challenging, especially in rural policing. So I just 

commend all of you that are taking this on. You're needed and appreciated a lot, especially in our region 

here.

Matt Lysakowski (01:04:07): Great, thank you. So, at this point I want to wrap things up. I do want to 

especially thank all of our presenters today. You all did an excellent job in covering this challenging and 

important topic. All of our contact information is on this slide, so please feel free to reach out to any of 

us with questions you may have.

The COPS Office is committed to improving public safety in rural Alaska and we look forward to 

providing additional technical assistance and resources to aid in this effort. I want to thank our 

presenters and I especially want to thank all of our participants today for taking the time to join us for 

this webinar. Thanks again, and this concludes the webinar.

TRT: 01:04:41