http://www.adn.com/2013/09/26/3096732/troopers-man-accused-of-shooting.html







Troopers: Man accused of shooting village police officer had diverted booze from a wedding

Published: September 26, 2013 Updated 10 hours ago





A Buckland man who shot a village police officer in July after being confronted in the dry community with a boatload of beer, wine and whiskey has agreed to plead guilty to attempted murder, third-degree assault and felony importation of alcohol, according to a notice filed in court Thursday.

Gary Ballot, 40, faces a sentence of between 20 and 30 years in prison, plus whatever other conditions the judge wants to impose, under the plea agreement.

Cases of Budweiser and Coors Light, along with liters of wine and bottles of Rich & Rare whiskey, were supposed to be delivered to a family camp between Buckland and Kotzebue for a wedding, according to a trooper's sworn statement filed with the original charges. On July 24, someone who didn't give a name called the troopers' Western Alaska Alcohol and Narcotics Team asking if it would be legal to transport alcohol from Kotzebue to the Lester Hadley camp about 15 miles north of Buckland for the wedding of Calvin Moto and Jessie Hadley. As long as the alcohol was bought legally in Kotzebue, didn't get within five miles of a dry community and wasn't offered for sale at the wedding, the action was legal, the caller was told.

But Ballot decided to take his alcohol-filled boat past the camp and back down to Buckland, where the importation, possession and sale of alcohol are banned, trooper Sgt. Kid Chan said in the statement. Buckland, a community of about 450 people, is 75 miles southeast of Kotzebue.

At some point the Buckland mayor, Tim Gavin, received an anonymous tip that Ballot was going to bring booze into the village, he told troopers. The village council authorized a warrantless search, the mayor said. He didn't return phone calls to discuss the case or the search. But state prosecutor Gustaf Olson said troopers obtained search warrants for their investigation after the shooting.

The mayor sent village police officer Lorin Geary a text that Ballot was making a booze run, Geary later told troopers.

A couple of passengers on Ballot's boat, Carl Thomas and Gilford Barr, later told an investigator they bought beer and spirits in Kotzebue, and expected it to be dropped off at the Hadley camp for the wedding. But Ballot refused, they said.

Jade Williams told troopers she came to Buckland from Kotzebue on Ballot's boat with her boyfriend, Jess Hadley, the brother of the bride.

Around midnight, three hours into the trip, Hadley told Ballot he would take over the driving. Ballot had been drinking, Williams said.

Early on July 26, the skiff arrived. The group unloaded boxes marked Mattel toys and Chiquita bananas in which troopers later found beer. Other village residents gathered around.

Geary, fellow village police officer Murphy Lee and village public safety officer Allen Jones met the boat on the banks of the Buckland River. Neither village police nor public safety officers are armed, though a Bush legislator is proposing to change that for the public safety officers.

Geary told Ballot he was going to search the boat and seize the alcohol, and would get a warrant later, he told troopers. Ballot smelled of alcohol, was swaying and had slurred speech and glassy eyes, Geary said.

Instead of cooperating, Ballot got back on the boat and pulled out a rifle, multiple witnesses told troopers.

Jade Williams said she started running away, as did others.

Geary told troopers he saw Ballot get something out of a box on the boat but didn't realize Ballot had a gun. He told Ballot he was going to arrest him.

Ballot raised the gun and said he wasn't going to go, Geary told troopers. Geary said he thought he was going to be killed. He jumped into the boat to wrest away the rifle but before he could grab it, Ballot shot him, the trooper statement said.

Lee, the other village police officer, saw feathers flying out from Geary's poufy jacket. Ballot -- with Geary still holding onto him -- tried to start the boat and take off, Lee told troopers. Lee said he jumped onto the skiff, turned off the engine and grabbed the rifle. Lee tried to handcuff Ballot but he ran off.

As the situation escalated, Gavin, the mayor, was on the phone talking the officers through the alcohol interdiction. An officer told him someone was shot. The mayor rounded up others and was headed to the scene when his wife called and said Ballot had just run by their house. From a pickup truck, the mayor-led group spotted Ballot, with a hat and bottle of Rich & Rare in his hands, near his own house.

When Ballot didn't obey orders to stop, the mayor said he jumped out of the truck, ran up to Ballot and tackled him. He and a neighbor then handcuffed the man.

Ballot's son came out and Ballot told him he shot Geary and "was going to jail for a long time," another witness told troopers.

Geary was seriously injured and only got out of Alaska Native Medical Center this month, said Olson, the prosecutor. He initially underwent about eight hours of surgery. The bullet went through his left elbow, which had to be reconstructed, the trooper statement said. That round or shrapnel went into his left hip and crossed his pelvis, lodging in his right ball joint, Olson said.

Geary faces a long period of rehabilitation. It's not yet known whether he will fully recover, the prosecutor said.

Ballot has agreed to plead guilty at a hearing set for Monday in Nome.

A conviction for attempted murder can bring a sentence ranging from five to 99 years. Ballot has prior felony convictions for weapons misconduct and burglary, the prosecutor said.

Reach Lisa Demer at [email protected] or 257-4390.

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Sorry, hit the enter button before pasting the story in...

This story is too common in Bush AK. Not the shooting part but the Boot-legging issue. Back in 03-04(?) the Troopers had a Drug and Alcohol Task Force and prevention officer stationed in Kotz. The Trooper and I hunted together and his kids played with ours often. I asked him about how they did undercover work and he explained that they would park their Sno-gos on the side of the Noorvik-Selawik trail during any of the many Sno-Go races and just wait. Most weekends they would be approached quickly by someone offering them booz or drugs and it was just that easy.

Almost all villages in NW AK are dry, on paper anyway. Don't know the answer.

You have some weird azz laws up there. Dry villages ? Ain't no such thing hereabouts. I see cops following hunters out into the woods to spy on them/try to catch them breaking game laws on that Alaska state troopers show and think WTF ? Thank god they don't do that here. It would pizz me off somethin' fierce to have some clod foot cop trompin' through the woods spooking deer when I'm trying to hunt.

Eskimos are Indians and Indians don't mix well with alcohol. Heck, long winters affect a lot of people like that. Ask a Swede sometime. I'm not a fan of prohibition, but the inhabitants of those little towns chose it themselves. Who are we to argue?

I went caribou hunting at a lodge outside the fishing village of Egegik AK years ago. Virtually everyone in the village was either an alcoholic, drug addict, or both. There was one girl in the town who stripped/hooked at the local bar, 22 years old and missing half her teeth.

I had a great time on my hunt and got a real nice bull, but it sure killed the image I had in my head of life in the wilds of Alaska.

One thing that profoundly impressed me when I lived in Alaska (late '50s, early '60s) was the realistic wisdom of so many village elders.

Terrible what happens when city values invade the country.

Sounds like just like Seattle when I was there back in 1987. Damned near everybody snortin coke. even 70 yr. old granny's.

I reckon if that's the way they want/need it, that's the way it should be.

Some of the housing developments here on the local Rez are supposedly "dry" The Indian police would put up a roadblock at the entrance and by the time they were through for the night, they would have a pickup full of beer. This all would be stored in an empty cell as evidence until it all disappeared.

They are called "Local Option" laws. Each village has the right to be "wet, Damp or Dry" Most choose Dry. Kotzebue was Damp for many years but now is Wet with a city liquor store located right next to the Jail! Cannot buy booz in bars or dinners.

So yer sayin' there's a lot of Dumb schits like you live in Alaska? Figures.

What do they sell in the bars then ?

There were values delivered by white traders and whalers. Booze was not an issue until it was introduces in a wholesale fashion. You can't expect a group of people to know how to tolerate something like Rum when it was never in their society. Most locals have 0 ability to drink a little.

How about this....No bars!

It so good to see that your ability to be a turd never waivers! Time to brush your teeth with that toilette brush!

I see the same sort of crap down in the south 48. Good, rural Christian communities ruined by welfare & crack.

Before you know it, you'll have HUD in there screwing up your little villages too!

Even you can do better than that Wally.

HUD has been in rural AK for many years.

Well then all hope is lost!

Don't worry. There are no dry villages in Alaska.

Sure there are some which the state thinks are dry, and they'll gladly turn otherwise fine people into felons for the simple act of bringing home a couple of bottles for their own consumption.

Of course, since it has such a high cost in terms of one's life, the price of that which comes in is jacked well up there....$250 (or more) for a 750 ml bottle of the cheapest stuff is quite ordinary). And because the price that can be gotten is so high, people are willing to take the chance, figure out a way to avoid getting caught, and bring it in. So there is a thriving black market.

I have gone back and forth on this, but I'd like to see AST enforce DUI and DV laws. Forget the idea that any place is actually dry. They aren't. Let people be responsible or not. It ain't just an alcohol problem. Make people realize that and accept the consequences and responsibility. Villages could operate the legal importation hub, perhaps even sell "softer" alcohol like beer and wine. They could charge a modest tax/processing fee for private importation. I know there would be problems; it sure isn't like there aren't already plenty as it is.


(Oh, and Eskimos are quite distinct from Indians, though they are both human with Asian continent roots.)

The late 50�s was the era when I lived in a couple of dry counties in the South.

Where I drank my first �shine.

I am a former tribal cop and I can tell you that dry reservations or villages are non existent. The bootleggers make so much money off of it that it won't go away.

I would rather have them drunk alcohol then the huffing, drinking mouth wash and OTC meds, making home brew, watching folks go blind and organ failure from bad stills.

Amazes me the ATF runs all over appalachia enforcing alcohol laws but won't even think of touching it in Indian country.

Just go to Whiteclay NE once to see how it affects folks, or about any res.

If there is violence in most cases there is alcohol.

I reckon you can probably drive into and out of most counties in the South - or other places where areas are "dry". Here in Alaska people can lose airplanes when they are involved in "alcohol trafficking."

Five pounds of sugar, some yeast, a few cans of juice, 24-72 hours and you can sell the result for $75/gallon or more. Show me one place that is actually dry. And Natives in Alaska have been fermenting stuff for longer, perhaps, than Europeans. They have had mild alcohol since forever (as well as mind-altering foods/substances). Tobacco was being imported long before Native people saw westerners. It was a big-time trade item when some of the first westerners came on the scene.

A friend has a cousin who is a policeman in AK. Huge guy, built like an NFL linebacker. Nice guy, too, with a lovely wife. At one party, he got to talking about whiskey...and talked, and talked, and talked about it for a couple hours. Never have seen anyone talk so much about whiskey

.

You are spot on. I lived in O'Neill NE and have been through Whiteclay a number of times. A sad state of a town.

You don't know misery until you have lived on a Res or a Bush community.

Are you suggesting that they are equivalent? Having lived 29 years in mostly two Alaska villages, I'd agree that there are challenges, sure, but misery? Not so much. Some of the least well-to-do (poor) folks are the most content.

Not when you are living with a drunk.

And the choir says, "What difference does it make where you live when you're living with a drunk?"

Do not assume I wouldn't understand...

Editted..... My failure to take umbrage does not mean it didn't occur to me that you might be trying to use a very broad brush with that comment.

Rich & Rare is good tradin' stock buy it by the case at Freddies.

Point taken

This is why some villages think it's necessary to outlaw alcohol.

No one has made them stay on the Res. The Government would have done them the biggest favor of their life it they had made them get off the tit fifty years ago.

The reservation system in the U.S. is the worst situation of discrimination and segregation that I'm aware of. The older generation wants to maintain the status quo by keeping alive the traditional culture. That culture is a romantic luxury that along with the reservation system is killing people. The combination of those two elements prepare people to fail and when they fail they lose self respect, spiral down into alcoholism and drug abuse.

The best thing that could happen to our native American citizens is for the reservations to be closed immediately so that they would have to integrate into the larger society. Sure some wouldn't make it. About the same that now die drunk in the gutters of Gallop NM and other similar places. But most will make it and be better off for it. Maybe they can keep their culture alive but the reservations must be abolished. Sure everyone will scream that the government is breaking another promise to the Indians. But it's a promise that never should have been made in the first place because it's intended to keep them permanently subordinate.

KC

http://townhall.com/columnists/terr...ng-the-wealth-of-indian-nations-n1709688

Fortunately the Fed Gov did things better in Alaska, hardly a reservation here at all, and those only by the people's choice.

There is only one legal reservation in AK, at Metlakatla...

Sadly there is much confusion about what was ceded by the Natives when signing on to ANILCA and ANCSA. Asking to get back what they gave away while keeping what they got is too often what they demand. Sea Alaska as the most recent major example.

Prohibition did not work for the nation, how can it work in the bush?
Well, lack of access makes it work, for a bit.
But "civilization" soon makes everyone felons.

It's true , the native population has a higher percentage of alcoholics, but that is "our fault"
Paying folks just because they live in the state.
Soon makes the state: drunk!

The native corporations lands might be better than the reservations in the lower 48 simply because they are so much bigger and more remote. But they are still reservations. Just because we don't call them reservations doesn't mean they aren't reservations. In those places people are trying to live in two cultures, maintaining the best of the traditional ways while incorporating the best of the industrialized world. It works for some but for many it doesn't work. Suicide rates among young people living in native villages is the highest in the nation and so is the rate of STDs. The rate of alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic abuse is as high in native villages as it is in the major urban sewers in the lower 48. Literacy rate is dismal so when young people leave the native villages and migrate to larger cities they run into the same problems as do native Americans in the lower 48. They aren't prepared to compete so they fail, they lose self respect and spiral into drug abuse and alcoholism. The system there is still preparing them to fail just like in the lower 48.

KC

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it just a matter of getting village votes to change? I mean, in a village of 200 people, you probably only have 100 voters. Get 51 and the law is changed. Sounds doable either way the people want it. (Not talking about the reality of dry vs wet here, just the law)

No, Indians don't do well with alchohol. It seems that way on every res. I have land 2 mi. from the Menominee Indian res. in Wis. I see them drunk every time I see indians. I guess we could let them drink if they want to so bad. Sadly, the problem would fix itself.

There's plenty of irony in the fact that some of the worst offenders are the same ones who vote to keep it dry. Of course, there are also those who protect their "livelyhood" by voting "dry". And then there are those who think that a law will help them be responsible, that it takes the "off the hook" just a bit. The places that seem to do things best are the ones where people understand personal responsibility, self-discipline, etc. Lots of ways to screw things up when a culture makes such huge shifts in only a few generations. But alcohol cannot be uninvented.

Dry rezs in Indian country are just a tactic for bootleggers to make more money.

I'm all fer freedom, but evidently,..a drunk Eskimo is a mean sumbitch!

Case in point,...Thompson, Manitoba.

Leading cause of death?,...drunk ass Eskimo.

http://www.thompsoncitizen.net/arti...ost-violent-crime-city-thompson-manitoba

Plenty of cases in point.....and most of them aren't Eskimos....or Indians.

Alcohol seems to lead to a lot more "crazy" and "stupid" than mean in my experience in Eskimo country. In that respect it ain't a whole lot different than in most places I'm thinking. I don't put much faith or trust in any drunk, even/especially myself.

Lack of access is merely a 'price multiplier' it seems.

Let's see, I want a new snowmachine. $8000 should get me an adequate machine paid for and landed. One case of booze might cost me $150 paid for and shipped. I can sell it for $3000. That's $2850 clear profit. Three cases puts me well beyond the needed amount.

Heck, PFDs are coming up. Instead of investing $450, it will be no skin off my back to throw it all in. That way I can double my initial thought. Heck $16,000 will buy any snowmachine I want, including virtually any of the high tech stuff. In addition, think of all the friends I'll have.

Even a relatively dull person can figure this out.

I see opportunity!

...and a new sled in my future.

In your case you'll probably need a 'front' and they'll need a cut. I don't do that. However, I can maybe arrange it - (for a "modest" percentage of course. ) You better consider investing your whole PFD. (You should still be able to get yourself a decent fanner. )

Anyone you know?

The eskimoes (artic people) eat lots of meat fat and used berry

juice for vit C. Didn't need any HTC for blood press,ECT.

And little need for alcohol to turn to sugar to make them sick

like us!

Bob

My brother is an alchoholic, been dry now for years, doing much better overall than me in fact.

But... growing up we had the exact same drinking habits.... as in drink ourselves to unconsciousness, the usual teen binges.

Next morning show me a beer and I would react like a vampire does to sunlight, whereas he would be in the fridge, looking for any left over.

The point being that I believe how one reacts to alchohol is genetic; my brother craved it, still fears it. Me, I could take it or leave it, always has been that way, will power or character having nothing to do with it.

The town drunk in every old Western movie? That was the guy with the genetic predisposition.

JMHO,
Birdwatcher

come from a family tree loaded with alcoholics....much in the way you describe your brother though they arent dry.....however my brother and i seem to be missing the "addiction gene"....hell when he was a smoker he could quit on a whim even though he smoked heavily at times....even though im on fairly heavy pain killers i tend to get pissed at the side effects semi regularly and just quit them cold turkey till the pain forces me back on them, which is usually immediately preceeded by me shattering a molar from trying to grit my teeth through the pain i have a hard time wrapping my head round those that have a hell of a time quiting stuff when its always been easy to me cause i dont have the addictive personality...