Opinion ID: 2546657
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Plaintiffs' State Equal Protection Claims

Text: .... 116. A critical threshold inquiry of Plaintiffs' state equal protection claim is a demonstration by Plaintiffs that due to the Defendants' policies and practices, Plaintiffs are receiving a different level of law enforcement services from other similarly situated Alaskans. 117. This court denied summary judgment to Defendants as to Plaintiffs' state equal protection claims because the parties disputed many of the material facts underlying the equal protection analysis. Alaska Rule of Civil Procedure 56. State v. Planned Parenthood, 35 P.3d 30, 46 (Alaska 2001). 118. At trial, both parties offered considerable evidence on the question of whether Plaintiffs are provided law enforcement services inferior to those provided by Defendants to other Alaskans. Both parties submitted detailed statistical analysis of the allocation of trooper resources and extensive criticism of each other's statistical models. 119. At trial, Plaintiffs asserted that their home communities were among 165 off-road communities with at least twenty-five residents in which no law enforcement officer certified by the Alaska Police Standards Council was posted. The parties referred to those communities as places in the complaint and presented conflicting statistical and anecdotal evidence as to whether the places in the complaint receive law enforcement services inferior to those provided in road system that also lack local law enforcement personnel certified by the Alaska Police Standards Council. 120. There are significant differences between the Plaintiffs' home communities and many of the off-road communities that Plaintiffs have characterized as places in the complaint. 121. The size of the places in the complaint varies considerably. Many of the 165 places in the complaint are less populated than the Plaintiffs' home communities. For example, Bettles, Birch Creek, Ivanof Bay, Karluk, Kasaan, Lake Minchumina, Meyers Chuck, Nikolski, Platinum, and Red Devil all have populations of less than 50 people. [Ex. P-27] Other places in the complaint are much larger. For example, Hooper Bay has a population of more than one thousand people. 122. Some of the places in the complaint have relatively stable populations, while others have seasonal residents with weaker ties to the community. 123. Some of the places in the complaint have judicial facilities, while others do not. 124. Some of the places in the complaint are easily accessible from communities with officers certified by the Alaska Police Standards Council. For example, Pitka's Point is not far from St. Mary's. Teller is connected by road to Nome, which serves as a trooper hub. The Aleknagik South Shore Road is connected to Dillingham by a gravel road that troopers may use to respond to calls. [Ex. P-58] 125. Other communities are relatively less accessible due to their distance from the hub post or other factors such as a lack of runway lights. 126. Some places in the complaint have VPSOs and/or VPOs. Akiachak and Tuluksak are among those communities. Approximately seventy-four of the places in the complaint have no local law enforcement or public safety personnel. Clark's Point is one of those communities. With the notable exception of an area that the parties label Kodiak Station and represent as having a population of almost two thousand people, the places in the complaint with no local law enforcement or public safety personnel are among the smallest communities in that group. [Ex. P. 27] 127. Some of the places in the complaint have restrictions on alcohol importation sale or possession; others do not. 128. At the time of the filing of this action, of the 165 off-road communities identified by the Plaintiffs as places in the complaint, 129 are predominantly Native and 36 are less than 50 percent Alaska Native. Of the 36 predominantly non-Native communities, only three of the communities have any local law enforcement at all. Of the 129 predominantly Native communities, 88 of these communities (68%) have either a VPSO or a VPO. 129. The places in the complaint are not particularly similar to each other except insofar as the communities generally lack road access and resident certified law enforcement officers and are relatively small. 130. The law enforcement needs of the places in the complaint vary considerably and a variety of mechanisms might need to be employed in order to provide appropriate law enforcement services to those communities. 131. There are also significant differences among the on-road communities under the primary jurisdiction of the troopers to which Plaintiffs have compared the places in the complaint. 132. Some of the communities Plaintiffs categorize as being on-road are large, while others are small. They range from an area designated as College, with a population of 12,407 to Ekuk, with a population of 2. [Ex. P-34] 133. The on-road communities vary in distance from trooper posts, population density, economic stability, age of population, and other factors that might correlate to the relative need for law enforcement services. Some on-road communities can be reached relatively easily from urban centers such as Anchorage or Fairbanks, while others are more remote. Some communities characterized as being on-road are located on islands with roads that are connected to Alaska's larger highway system only by ferry service. 134. Because the places in the complaint are not similar as a group to Plaintiffs' home communities, and because the communities characterized as being on-road are not uniformly similarly situated to the places in the complaint, this court does not find the parties' statistical analyses of the allocation of trooper resources between places in the complaint and on-road communities to be particularly helpful to answering the question of whether Plaintiffs are provided comparatively inferior law enforcement services from the Alaska State Troopers. 135. The majority of individuals served by the AST in Detachment C live in off-road communities. Residents in this detachment have a trooper ratio of one trooper for every 971 residents. 136. The majority of individuals served by the AST in Detachments B and E live in on-road communities. Residents in each of these detachments have fewer troopers per capita than Detachment C, with one trooper for over 1,000 residents. See Finding # 21, above. .... 138. The State has also demonstrated that the difference in crime rates between on-road and off-road communities is not of such a magnitude that a different per capita allocation of law enforcement resources is mandated for these two types of communities. Taken as a whole, neither group of communities can be said to experience significantly more crime than the other. Although there are disparities in the types of crimes between on-road and off-road communities, the overall crime rates are comparable. AST has fairly allocated troopers in a manner that adequately addresses the crime risk experienced in on-road and off-road communities. 139. Plaintiffs did present testimony that suggested that residents of off-road communities lacking a regular presence of certified law enforcement officers experienced particular difficulties in the receipt of law enforcement services. As Commissioner Godfrey acknowledged at trial, an off-road community without any local police may not be receiving the same level of police protection that the troopers are able to provide to on-road communities. [Tr. at 1038]. But this court finds these discrepancies are due principally to the geographic isolation, weather conditions and transportation difficulties inherent in the location of many off-road communities, and not to an unconstitutional under-allocation of trooper resources to the more remote communities in this state. Cf. Massachusetts Gen. Hosp. v. Weiner, 569 F.2d 1156, 1161 (1st Cir.1978) (holding no denial of equal protection where, for purposes of setting Medicare rates, there is uniform treatment of urban teaching hospitals and rural hospitals) cited in Evans v. State of Alaska, 56 P.3d 1046, 1055 (Alaska, 2002). The Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the Defendants' policies and practices have had the effect of systematically depriving Plaintiffs of law enforcement services provided to other Alaskans. 140. Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the racial composition of a community is a factor that affects the allocation of Alaska State Trooper case-related hours to that community. 141. Many off-road communities, including some of the communities that are home to Plaintiffs, have VPSOs and/or VPOs who provide additional and significant law enforcement services to residents in addition to the law enforcement services provided by the troopers. These additional law enforcement services are not generally available in on-road communities, and provide further support for this court's conclusion that no violation of equal protection has been demonstrated in the allocation of law enforcement resources to the Plaintiffs. 142. This court's conclusion that no equal protection violation has been demonstrated is based on this court's review of the allocation of law enforcement resources in the State of Alaska during the pendency of this litigation. Plaintiffs introduced as exhibits a large amount of historical materials that would tend to demonstrate a more disparate allocation of law enforcement resources in prior years and decades, indicating times when rural Alaskans, including rural Native Alaskans, received considerably less in the way of law enforcement services. This court need not and does not determine whether there may have ever been in years past a violation of equal protection in the provision of law enforcement services. In this same regard, the court also notes than the testimony and exhibits introduced at this trial demonstrated a remarkably high level of commitment by many individuals from many different perspectives over many years, all dedicated toward improving the delivery of law enforcement services to Alaskans, including but not limited to Native Alaskans, that reside in the more remote parts of this state. 143. As a matter of social and economic policy, there may be merit in the view of some of the witnesses at trial that remote communities in Alaska would be safer if the State posted troopers or other certified law enforcement officers on a full time basis within each such community. There may also be merit to the assertion of a number of witnesses that public safety needs would be better met if the VPSO program were strengthened by increasing the program budget to improve training, salaries, and equipment for VPSOs. Many such changes might be possible if more state resources were devoted to law enforcement in the Plaintiffs' home communities. But within the confines of the total resources allocated to law enforcement at this time, such changes could well be at the expense of law enforcement services in other communities or, on a broader scale, at the expense of other public health and safety services. .... 145. With respect to their state equal protection claim, Plaintiffs have not proven that that the State's existing system of allocating troopers' resources deprives them of law enforcement services that are provided to similarly situated Alaskans. No violation of equal protection has been demonstrated on the basis of trooper allocation alone. And since, in this court's view, the VPSO and VPO programs are viewed as a valuable supplement to (and not a substitute for) the troopers' law enforcement services, their addition to some of the Plaintiff communities does not constitute an equal protection violation. ....