By SCOTT OGAN
There are those who posture and talk about societal ills, and then there are those who do something about them.
When it comes to rural physical and sexual assault and human trafficking, Rep. Sarah Vance of District 6 Homer is among those trying to affect real change.
Vance recently apologized for making the following statement in the State House Tribal Affairs Committee following testimony from Alaska Native justice advocates:
“What I hear in this committee is that Alaska Native women feel that it’s exclusive to your experience. Because it sounds exactly like what I have heard of white women in my community, it’s the same thing.” She went on to add, “But what I continue to hear in this committee over and over again as if you’re the only one. And I know that’s not your heart.”
It’s clear Rep. Vance cares passionately about this issue and is an ally in the fight against every form of physical and sexual abuse and human trafficking. What is equally revealing is the relentless effort by the extreme left, inspired by their prophet Rahm Emanuel, to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.”
Their criticism of Rep. Vance’s comments speaks to the larger issue of Alaska’s dismal progress on this issue and the need to come together with focus on solutions.
Rep. Vance has been a stalwart defender against human trafficking and against violence, particularly in rural Alaska. She spearheaded getting stickers made that are placed in public restrooms across the state to give trafficked women a phone number to call for help. She has also sponsored several bills on this subject.
Looking for Solutions
I suggest Vance should leverage her Judiciary Committee chair position and appoint a subcommittee on missing and murdered indigenous women, as well as human trafficking, to focus on the root causes of how Native women in Alaska fall victim at such high rates.
There are a few elephants in this “rural sexual assault” room, the largest of which is accountability for progress.
A few days after Rep. Vance made her comment, Department of Public Safety Commissioner James Cockerell stated it is shameful rural Alaska had received disproportionately less law enforcement resources since statehood
“We’ve closed our eyes and allowed rural Alaska to be seriously victimized,” Cockerell said.
This is a curious confession from the head of Public Safety, who has been in a position to implement policy decisions on the topic of rural law enforcement, serving as the head of the Alaska State Troopers and the Alaska Department of Public Safety under more than one governor. I respect the commissioner, but who is the “we” he refers to? Who does he believe is accountable for this current state of crisis?
Alaska has a long history of violence against women and children. In 2020, Alaska was ranked the 21st worst state in terms of homicides. That rose 67% by 2022, from 6.7 per 100,000 to 10.3 per 100,000, placing Alaska in 5th place.
Compare that to the national average of 6.5 per 100,000. These are statewide statistics that do not take into account the higher percentage of “missing” women who were likely murdered.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that recidivism among Alaska Natives and American Indians is four times higher for men compared to the national average and six times higher for women. Think of what this means about the rates of crime in rural Alaska and the cycle of despair.
An FBI report in 2016 paints an even bleaker image of sexual violence across the United States and highlights a very concerning data point: If a child suffers sexual abuse, he or she is 23% more likely to commit sexual violence against another person. If a child suffers physical abuse, he or she is 24% more likely to commit sexual violence against another person.
When we discuss the rates of sexual violence in our communities, we need to understand that physical violence is a root cause. Imagine what this does to a child who is the victim of both sexual and physical abuse.
Violence is violence, regardless of who the victims or perpetrators are. However, violence among the Alaska Native and American Indian populations is occurring at far higher rates per capita than among other populations. Our politicians need to focus less on discrediting their opponents and take more time to inform and collaborate. We need to have a sense of urgency to handle this problem now, but we can’t lose our patience, dignity, and respect.
Most Native Alaskans understand Rep. Vance is not the problem in this fight, but rather a staunch ally. The need to break the chain of violence is undeniable, but partisan attacks against Vance are not helpful.
Vance’s debacle calls to mind the phrase, “No good deed goes unpunished.” What is in our heart matters, but it’s what we actually do that changes the world. Vance’s work is helping our brothers and sisters in rural Alaska to find their voice by speaking out about sexual predation and physical abuse, both of which contribute to the highest rates of suicide in the nation.
Choose Respect
Gov. Sean Parnell started a “Choose Respect” campaign with great promise and intentions. It produced regular marches and rallies across Alaska. The Choose Respect movement was mainly a public awareness effort with few systemic changes or actions. In fact, during this time, thousands of sexual assault kits from across Alaska went unprocessed for years.
In 2013, activists showed up at one such Choose Respect rally to bring attention to the high number of indigenous women who were victims. The rallygoers interrupted Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell’s speech and received significant media attention. The interruptions took on the appearance of partisanship, but their main point — that little progress was being made — resonated. Alaskans need to refrain from political grandstanding and find ways to solve this problem together.
Choose Respect rallies are a thing of the past, and there has been little statistical progress made on the issues of missing murdered indigenous women or sexual assaults in rural Alaska. However, it brought people together on the issue from across the political aisle for a short time. Ten years later, Alaska is still among the worst states in national statistics measuring crimes where violence against women and children are present, and more alarming is that statistics that isolate Alaska’s indigenous population are much higher.
The Need for Results
In 2018, Sen. Mike Shower’s office proposed to dramatically reform Alaska’s rural policing model from top to bottom by creating a full-time, rural police force comprised of officers policing the villages where they live. We worked with a broad-based group of rural legislators, regional Alaska Native organizations, Village Public Safety Officers, and law enforcement experts to design a comprehensive model to change the face of how we protect the people of rural Alaska. Sen. Shower held a Native Alaska tribal summit to listen to the concerns of rural residents. The plan was later considered by a legislative working group led by then-Senate President Cathy Giessel and then-Speaker of the House Representative Bryce Edgmon.
The idea was summarily dismissed by the Department of Public Safety. Why? One aspect of Shower’s plan challenged the status quo, the current “hub and spoke” model of rural State Trooper law enforcement, claiming that it is ineffective. This current model pays to house mostly non-native Troopers in a hub community and deploy them into communities only when an incident occurs.
Imagine if the Anchorage Police Department worked like this: When a Hillside resident calls 911, it rings a dispatcher in Seattle who takes your information and informs you that they will send an officer as quickly as possible once they can secure a flight to Anchorage, depending on the weather. This is an unacceptable policing model and needs to be re-examined in light of our current statistics.
One highlight of Shower’s plan proposed to utilize the high number of fully funded but perennially vacant Trooper positions statewide as a permanent, culturally relevant and localized rural police force who already live in Alaska’s villages. Sen. Shower believes his plan is fiscally more sound.
In contrast, the Department of Public Safety bristles at the suggestion that it uses the funding otherwise assigned to the many unfilled Trooper positions as a rural duty “overtime” slush fund. Is our Legislature smart enough to run these numbers and expose the fiscal truth of the matter? The health and welfare of rural Alaska demands that we do just this.
Let’s take a close look at the net savings of funding a model that activates a competent, culturally integrated, full-time, entirely local, rural police department into our villages to disrupt the status quo.
Recommendation: The Legislative Budget and Audit Committee should conduct an audit of DPS funding available for rural law enforcement. It should conduct a fiscal impact analysis comparing the status quo to Sen. Shower’s proposed re-structure. At the same time, the committee should inquire of the DPS commissioner: “Who is the ‘we’ you refer to and exactly who is accountable for the current situation?”
In conclusion, it is time to move beyond the status quo, beyond the politics of good intentions and do something about this tragedy. When we focus on the victims and those suffering, we cease vilifying champions of change, like Rep. Vance, and work toward solutions. Every opportunity lost for bipartisan reconciliation is a life lost.
Scott Ogan served as a legislator in the Alaska House and Senate and writes for Must Read Alaska.
