Alaska State Troopers - Village Public Safety Officer Program

Village Public Safety Officer Program

The Alaska State Troopers also manage the Village Public Safety Officer program, which provides a peace officer presence in remote villages with no police departments and that are too small for a trooper post. VPSOs are state trained peace officers but not fully credentialed Alaska police officers. They carry no firearms, however, do carry all other typical tools of a peace officer, such as a TASER, pepper spray, and baton. The VPSO 9-week training course at the DPS Academy mirrors several aspects of the ALET program except that VPSOs do not receive basic emergency vehicle operation course (EVOC) and firearms training. If a VPSO should later opt to join a police department after completion of VPSO training, they would be required to attend the dull DPS Law Enforcement Training Program.

VPSOs are supervised by designated area Troopers and carry out only basic police tasks such as emergency call response, juvenile offense investigations, protective custody holds of inebriates, assistance to social workers and medical providers, crime scene preservation, issuance of citations for misdemeanor and non-criminal violation offenses, misdemeanor arrests and detention of felony suspects for surrender to troopers, wildlife protection through the Division of Fish and Wildlife Enforcement, engage in search and rescue of missing persons and perform services usually performed by county sheriff's departments in other states, such as prisoner transport. Because VPSO's do not carry firearms, they are trained with non lethal weapons, such as pepper spray and expandable batons. VPSOs usually receive Alaska Firefighter-I training and either Alaska Emergency Medical Technician-I (EMT-I) or Alaska Emergency Trauma Technician (ETT) in addition to the basic training.

The Village Public Safety Officer Program began in the late 1970s as a means of providing rural Alaskan communities with needed public safety services at the local level. The program was created to reduce the loss of life due to fires, drowning, lost person, and the lack of immediate emergency medical assistance in rural communities. The Village Public Safety Officer Program was designed to train and employ individuals residing in the village as first responders to public safety emergencies such as search and rescue, fire protection, emergency medical assistance, crime prevention and basic law enforcement. Recent pay raises and expanded training have improved the retention and recruitment of VPSOs though some rural residents continue to resent that they are not afforded full police officer protection and some have tried to challenge reduced police powers of the VPSOs by legal means.