ALCOHOL WAS A FACTOR: Weekly Newspapering in Rural Alaska

The Feltist and the Police Blotter

Joe Parnell, defender of the public good here in Haines, Alaska, is up in arms about a very critical factor of life in backcountry Alaska: the police blotter.

The problem is that the cops won’t release their officer-response reports so the newspaper can run them each week.

These reports are important to Joe.

When asked why, he paused and said “I’m just exercising my right to see them. I don’t have to have a reason why I want to see them.”

He added, “I’m standing up for the people’s right to see public records. Nobody else is going to do it, apparently.”

Here’s the thing: The new Haines police chief stopped releasing the reports in their entirely not long after he started here two months ago.

Tongues began wagging when the police chief, Heath Scott, moved in temporarily with his boss, borough manager Bill Seward. It was unseemly, they said; and illegal. Scott said the arrangement was just temporary, but people were still pissed. They all go around citing code, saying the whole thing stinks — which brings us back to Joe and cops.

Scott has suggested that he’s not releasing the reports in a sort of quid-pro-quo against newspaper owner Tom Morphet.

You see, Tom is also a borough assemblyman which is like a city council member. Tom has said publicly that he wants a smaller department.

That doesn’t sit well with Heath. So, he won’t play ball with his reports.

And that pisses off Joe Parnell.

He decided to write a letter-to-the-editor expressing his dismay over the whole lack of transparency.

He wrote the first draft on a 3-foot by 18-inch piece of foam board with an ugly yellow water stain running across the middle.

Maybe Joe is channeling Jack Kerouac, who wrote his epic masterpiece “On the Road” on an endless spool of paper.

“I was just sitting there in my apartment and this thing was just setting there,” Joe said of the piece of cardboard. “so, I just started writing.”

“I’ve done it before. These things are hard to lose.”

Joe edited the final letter. His first version included the sentence, “The people who run Haines are weasels,” but Joe demurred.

He remembered what his mother always said: If you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.

So, he’s not saying that.

Joe believes good manners apply, even here in Haines, which he says follows the credo “You make your own life brighter by extinguishing someone else’s.”

Joes has his own credo: “When reason fails, use force.”

So, Joe wrote about the police, “I’m a nice guy so I would suggest you read Alaska Statute Title 40 and then turn yourselves in; say you are sorry and start following the law.”

He’s still waiting for a response.