Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Alaska Misconceptions

Most folks think of Alaska as a quiet, beautiful place to be. It is beautiful, but it has it's dark side.

Anchorage is where I spent most of my life and most of my LE career. To see this article just solidifies my opinion that it is no longer the place I grew up in.

[b]Top 10 dangerous/safest places in the west.[/b]

Anchorage is already headed for a record number of homicides this year.

Ed

Tweekers? Illegals?

Not surprised one bit and I haven't lived in AK since 97. Anchorage is just another big city to me.

My wife lived in Anchorage for over 30 years. She says that while AK attracts outdoor types who want to be on a bit of a frontier, it also attracts a lot of misfits who can't fit in with the real world. They go to AK to try to escape. Of course when they get there, they find out that AK is also the real world. There is no escape. A lot of them try to homestead but give it up after the 1st winter.

A lot of the mountain men were misfits of the same type.

NOw this is gonna bug me, trying to remember O-town's "1" murder that year......

lotta good folks where I live, but there's some of the other type too.

we're lucky that our life style and vocation puts us in proximity to a vast majority of the good ones, and I'm grateful for that.

believe it lulls my family into a false sense of security at times.

but I try and remain vigilant

just because the only folks you really have to worry about only make up 3-5% of those you share a community with, doesn't mean they aren't there.


for most of the sheep, being prepared equates with being paranoid, until some S splatters on the fan, then the definition of prepared becomes a lot more real to them.

imo, one of the most disturbing aspects of our society is those folks that don't prepare for eventualities often seem to resent those that do and will even champion legislation prohibiting them from doing so. crazy stuff imo

we've been might lucky, and hopin that luck holds, still can't hurt to have a jack in your car or fire extinguishers about.

Once again NM is on a bad list. 742 violent crimes per 100K in Albuquerque.

I got out of Anchorage a couple decades back and it was getting messy then. I sure wish there was a road around that mess for when I go to visit friends on the KP.

IMO, the Alaska social services have been extravagant to the point of attracting more people.

I've heard the narcotics trade has been a big attractant but I'm not around those types to gain first hand knowledge.

It will be interesting to watch the results of these low oil prices........will the good, hardworking people leave for jobs elsewhere and will any of our problem people leave also? I think next winter will tell the story.

Looks like the raping is what puts both of them in the top 10, should open some cat houses.

Winter separated the tough from the wannabee's.

There's a bunch of them there plus the street walkers. No shortage of "tail fer sale" there.

BTW, rape (sexual assault) has nothing to do with sexual desire, it is the most severe form of assault to a victim. It is all about power and control, while using a sexual act to commit it. Tons of research over the past twenty-thirty years have confirmed that.
Alaska was one of the places used in the studies just because there were so many reported sexual assaults.

Ed

Keeping an eye on murder in Alaska is pretty easy,, there's the gang's in Anchorage and the misfits that can't handle life anywhere and kill their family and themself. A good deal are natives that simply should never have a drop of alcohol in their life, probably most bush killings are done in the midst of a drunken blackout. Crazies off their meds and drunks in the boonies with guns everywhere, bad combo!

Every known major organized gang/criminal organization in the world has a presence in Anchorage. Chinese Tongs, Yakuza, Korean Mob, traditional American/Italian Mob, Russian Mob, Israeli Mob, Albanian Mob, Romanian Mob, Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, MS-13, Mexican Mafia, Dominican Mob, Black Panthers, radical Muslims, Hell's Angels, at least two Mexican Cartels (Arellano-Felix & Beltran-Leyva), Asian Boyz, Tiny Rascals, Aryan Brotherhood, and who knows how many others. Anchorage P.D.'s Administration chose to close it's Gang Intel Unit down for political reasons, thus shutting off any viable information on who and what was being moved into and through Anchorage.

You can reach anywhere on Earth, north of the Equator, by air within 12 hours from Anchorage, making it a huge trans-shipment point for anything and anyone you wish to smuggle.

The TV show "Deadliest Catch" is filmed out of Unalaska (Dutch Harbor, pop. ~4,000) which is the third busiest port of entry into the US.

Ponder this; Once a ship has made landfall into the US froma foreign port, they don't HAVE to be checked by US Customs again if they travel directly to another US port, even if they travel across International Waters to get there. There was ONE full time Customs guy and two part-time customs guys at Unalaska when I left. I don't think they have expanded that number. Remember, the THIRD busiest port of entry. They have discovered dozens of Asian illegals in shipping containers aboard these ships over the years. How many did they miss? What else is coming into our country that they miss?

Add in a lot of darkness in the winter, remoteness, mostly a transient population, and younger than the national average with a higher than national average disposable income. Toss in an attitude that all drugs are for "medicinal use", a growing racism problem fueled by the enviro-whackos, availability of alcohol, few LEO's, and a very pervasive socialist attitude, and you have problems.

Ed

I am really saddened by the state of things in Alaska these days. Partly its that the deserted little rural neighborhood we live in is being populated a little more every year, and mostly by rejects from town and troublemakers. Alot of it has to do with all the crime.

Sure, part of it is that I just wasn't paying attention, being naive, when I was younger. But i think it really has gotten that much worse. I hear home invasions, robberies, and assaults daily. Out here in the valley, the meth heads seem to be everywhere you go. Robbing homes, scams, begging for money in the parking lot of local businesses. Lots of assaults, people going missing, scary stuff when you are raising young kids. Heroine is now making a comeback.

We have been giving serious consideration to leaving or moving to another part of the state, but there is just too many good things about living here and raising our kids in the woods to leave. I've seen what happens to many people who leave AK, and I know that I'd be wanting to move back within a year.

I think that drugs are the biggest cause of the violence and a serious effort to nail the dealers and users should help. The troopers have been stepping up enforcement of late and it is appreciated. The second thing is what VernAK mentioned. Too many social welfare programs, pfd, etc that need to be stopped. I would love to see the pfd disappear. Use it to build some infrastructure in the state, IMO.

It's certainly not all wonder and beauty in the last frontier.

Ed-
Didn't see it in the article, but briefly, what explains these 2 different rankings?

In spite of this statistic, I feel much safer in Los Anchorage than a lot of places Outside.



TOP 10 MOST DANGEROUS METROS IN THE WEST
#1 Anchorage, AK Metro Area
Anchorage, AK

Overall Rank: #6

The Pipeline brought in not only conservative, hard working folks, it also brought in the enviro-whackos along with the Hippies and other progressive liberals.

The progressive liberals with their enviro-whackos and their socialist bent are the ones responsible for the growing racism in the state. It didn't help that the Missionaries had banned a lot of Native culture, the Outside companies had taken over control of a significant amount of resources including the fisheries, and Natives seen by most Outsiders were the drunks in the cities.

You should have seen MY Alaska of the 60's and early 70's. A wonderful place to grow up and raise kids.

When the State got their hands on the oil royalty money, they did away with the income tax (which was really all that fueled state government) and started handing out the PFD. That drew the losers of the world to Alaka like flies to honey.

The drug are only a part of the problem. Alcohol plays a huge part. Look at the dry villages to see the success of prohibition, even with the bootlegging and home-made booze. The Domestic Violence rate has plummeted, violent crimes in general have plummeted, property crimes plummeted, and families are families again.

Who ever says that Prohibition doesn't work hasn't seen the effects of a genuine effort to shut it down. Not the farcical effort that was made in early 20th Century, but how it's done in rural Alaska. Are there still drugs & alcohol in those villages? Ye, but it's the citizenry that shuts them down, not just LE because the citizens have seen the benefits of shutting it down.

Off my soapbox now...

Ed

The Anchorage BBB used to offer the "Alaska Dirty Dozen list" back in the 70's pipeline era to those who would move up thinking it to be a new nirvana. Each point of the list, as I recall, was related in a per capita fashion and none of it good.

The #1 ranking is in the West. The #6 ranking is Nationwide. I agree, there are much more dangerous places to visit Outside, but Anchorage is a violent city. Most folks don't see it because they aren't in the places, at the times, that most of it occurs.

I recall one mid 1990's summer when I was on Patrol, mid-shift (11:00PM - 09:00AM) when we had fifteen cops to cover the entire city of ~275,000 people.

There was a six-week period where, every night, every Patrol Officer had drawn their sidearm, preparing to shoot someone because of the nature of the violence being perpetrated. One night, after about five weeks onto this spell, I walked into the Briefing Room at the start of our shift to receive our pre-shift breifing and area assignments, and I looked around at my fellow officers. What I saw could be best described as "battle fatigue". Thousand Yard Stares all around the room, no emotion as the Supervisors briefed us on the past day's events, pending calls, and locates for bad guys and "hot" locations.

I can't begin to tell you how many physical fights I was in, how many people I arrested, and how many calls I answered. It seemed a if it would never end. Finally, it did.

Side note, during this time, a use-of-force study/citizen complaint was done at APD by some graduate students at UAA. They found that the single largest complaint of citizens was that we were rude at times. No beatings, no excessive use of force, no shootings by cops. Rudeness.

Ed

Yup. My wife was the Comptroller for the Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau for many years. It was ACVB that forced the BBB to stop publishing that bit of info as it would scare business and visitors away.

Much like the former Mayor and the former Chief of Police, Duane Udland, who decreed that under threat of discipline, no APD employee would make reference to "gangs", "drive-by-shootings", "gang activities", "gang related graffiti", or "gang violence" as there were no gangs in Anchorage, only some "wannabees". Even when a local, self-proclaimed" street gang who called themselves the "Nelchina Street Clique" robbed, murdered, and burned (twice, but that's another story) a pot grower to death in Fairview. Even when we were stopping people with MS-13 tats, Latin King tats, Blood & Crip tats, and the Tiny Rascals and another Asian Street gang were in an all-out street battle.

BTW, in obeying the Chief, "gangs" became "social groups", "drive-by-shootings" became "mobile platform firearm discharges", "gang activities" became "social events", "gang related graffiti" became simply "graffiti", and "gang violence" became "violent acts".

Don't want to upset the visitors, now do we?

Ed

Just another big city and sad the play on words used by the pols but that ain't anything new is it.

I do miss The Alaskan Bush Company and The Peanut Bar. Need to find my way back up there.