Alaska State Troopers
| Division of Alaska State Troopers | |
|---|---|
| Common name | Alaska State Troopers |
| Abbreviation | AST |
Patch of the Alaska State Troopers
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Flag of the State of Alaska
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Badge of an Alaska state trooper
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Flag of the Alaska State Troopers
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| Motto | "Loyalty, Integrity, Courage" |
| Agency overview | |
| Formed | 1967 |
| Preceding agencies |
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| Employees | 653 commissioned members |
| Legal personality | Governmental: Government agency |
| Jurisdictional structure | |
| Operations jurisdiction* | State of Alaska, U.S. |
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| Alaska State Trooper Detachments | |
| Size | 663,268 square miles (1,717,900 km2) |
| Population | 736,732 (2014 est.) |
| General nature | |
| Operational structure | |
| Headquarters | Anchorage, Alaska |
| Troopers | 650 (as of 2013 ) |
| Civilians | 303 (as of 2013) |
| Parent agency | Alaska Department of Public Safety |
| Bureaus | 2 |
| Facilities | |
| Detachments | 5 |
| Website | |
| dps.state.ak.us/ast | |
| Footnotes | |
| * Divisional agency: Division of the country, over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction. | |
The Alaska State Troopers, officially the Division of Alaska State Troopers (AST), is the state police agency of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is a division of the Alaska Department of Public Safety (DPS). The Alaska State Troopers is a full-service law enforcement agency which handles both traffic and criminal law enforcement. The Alaska State Troopers is also involved in apprehending fugitives as part of the Alaska Fugitive Task Force, an inter-agency collaborative of Alaska police departments that cooperates with police agencies throughout the United States and less commonly with Interpol in apprehending wanted men and women. Unlike many lower-48 states, Alaska troopers are both state troopers and game/wildlife enforcement officers.
Because Alaska has no counties, therefore no county police or sheriffs, in its constitution, the troopers also handle civil papers and mental health custody orders and serve as police throughout mostly all of rural Alaska. Alaska does have boroughs, which have some similarities but with lesser powers of lower-48 U.S. counties, but only the North Slope Borough police truly functions similarly to a lower-48 county police agency and thus relieves AST of a need to be the primary police agency in this particular region. Alaska troopers are the most geographically extended peace officers aside from federal officers in the USA. They have little, if any local backup; within the entire State of Alaska, only about 1,300 full-time sworn law enforcement officers patrol a state 1/5th the size of the entire lower-48 and other than troopers and state park rangers, the local officers remain in their communities except in extreme emergencies. This includes the only metropolitan police agency in Alaska, the Anchorage Police Department with almost 500 officers. The remaining officers are the over 300 Alaska troopers and smaller municipal agencies which have around 50 in towns like the state capital of Juneau or the second largest town in the state, Fairbanks. The remaining officers serve in small agencies with anywhere from one to ten officers on average.
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Wikipedia