Juneau police establish University of Alaska Southeast office

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – The Juneau Police Department has unveiled a new substation at the University of Alaska Southeast.

JPD debuted the new space a converted storage room near the Egan Library to the public Thursday afternoon during “Coffee with a Cop.“

The room may be a little spartan (there's only one computer and desk, and the walls are mostly bare), but UAS officials expressed excitement at having a visible police presence on campus. Officers won't be staffing the substation, but they can go there instead of doing work at JPD headquarters in Lemon Creek or the other police substation downtown by the transit center

“Officers can go there to write reports or have lunch, or just to be a visible presence,“ JPD Lt. David Campbell said, adding that staffing the substation might come later down the road. “The first step was establishing a presence and a place.“

Establishing a police substation on campus was not a result of an uptick in crime on campus, said Michael Ciri, UAS vice chancellor for administration, who described the campus as very safe. The substation has been in the works since early spring and was formalized when a memorandum of understanding was signed Oct. 23 by UAS and JPD.

UAS is the only one of the University of Alaska “big three“ campuses (the other two being Anchorage and Fairbanks) that doesn't have its own campus police force. In the past, the university contracted with private security companies to patrol campus and monitor crime. The latest contract, with Goldbelt Security Services, ended in late June.

“This creates a visible presence on the campus, and that can be very reassuring for people,“ Ciri said. “We don't have a campus police force, so there's not campus cops walking around, and this creates an environment where I expect that quite often when you drive onto the campus, you'll see a police car there and you'll encounter police officers. It just creates a way that people can feel there's a more reassuring presence of law enforcement on the campus, so it really does improve security.“

Ciri said creating the substation did not cost the university a lot of money. All the school had to do was provide furniture, a computer, telephone, the room and a parking space.

“It seems to be a win-win-win situation,“ he said. “It allows us to improve safety and security at a very nominal cost to us, but also really improve the safety of the whole Auke Bay community by creating that base of operation. This is kind of why when the idea floated, I was mostly just embarrassed that I didn't think of it before.“

Police said the substation is not just for UAS, but will help them better serve the entire community past Lemon Creek and the Mendenall Valley.

“We're viewing this as not just something for the campus,“ Campbell said. “We're viewing it for a resource for everyone on Back Loop Road, Auke Bay and out the road. It's more of a geographic substation.“