Cody Litster: from alternate recruit to trooper of the year

PETERSBURG ­ – Trooper Cody Litster was about to pack everything he needed for the day into his truck one Thursday morning when he got a phone call about a shooting in his jurisdiction, 50 miles away.

"It seems like it's all making sense now that I've asked a few more questions," said Litster, on his first call with a school administrator in Kake, who reported the shooting.

Litster, a wildlife trooper, was in Petersburg when he first heard from Kake, a small village with no local police that's two hours away by boat. There had been "someone with a gun, maybe threatening people."

"Maybe the troopers are on their way," said Litster, now on his third call with people in Kake. "Sometimes I'm disconnected since I'm the only guy over here, but I'm hoping they are because it sounds fairly serious."

One of Litster's roles as a trooper is a facilitator. In this case, he is monitoring an alleged shooting that occurred hours away and involves humans - he's a game warden.

He's trained on non-wildlife crime as well, though he doesn't prefer it especially in a native town like Kake, in which he has built 'kind of' a good relationship with its residents. As a result they often report crimes to the wildlife trooper.

After all, Litster is the only brown shirt, as they're called, within miles. And a state trooper, or blue shirt, who would normally be on the case is about four hours away.

Litster is on the phone with blue shirts deciding who is going to respond to the shooting. The blue shirts talk to him about chartering a plane, but Litster could be there in half that time by boat.

The blue shirts decide they will head to Kake, relieving Litster and canceling a boat ride that would have upended his day tracking the moose hunt in Petersburg.

That was the first half-hour of his day: making six calls and coordinating a possible shooting in a faraway village.

Wasting no time, he grabbed a can of spicy peanuts and went out the road away from Petersburg. He tries not to patrol in town, as his relationship with the local police is good and there's no reason to, unless someone is demonstrably evading the law or hardly keeping a vehicle straight.

"If you're drunk enough for the game warden to give a DUI," he said. "You must have been really drunk."

He has a state trooper ballcap on, thin glasses and tan, veiny hands. His sentences never end with a question and he can't feel the bulletproof vest that pokes from his abdomen, which he hates but finds convenient.

Litster usually starts the day by calling the local police department to let them know where he'll be. He checks in with the state troopers dispatch in Ketchikan and with his supervisor in Juneau, which he calls a disjointed system.

His jurisdiction is the mainland about halfway to Juneau, down to the north end of Prince of Wales Island. His main areas of operation are Wrangell, Kake, Point Baker and Petersburg, his home port.

"It looks huge," Litster said. "But there is not much population in it."

Litster got a degree in zoology at Oregon State University, around where he grew up. His career was heading toward biology after years of building contacts and references with most of the state and federal groups in the area. He graduated and was confident a job would follow.

"I barely even got a call back," Litster said. "I didn't get squat."

He was about 24 when he first moved to Alaska to work in construction. After a few years, he decided to pursue the state trooper academy.

He was actually an alternate selection into the academy. A person had dropped out and he was next in line.

"The academy either breaks you or brings you closer together," Litster said. "One of the guys said, 'this isn't for me, I'm out of here,' and I'm like 'let's go.'"

Litster would later be awarded Alaska's Wildlife Trooper of the Year in 2013.

When he graduated from the academy, he was ready to venture out to the bush or fly planes. However, being the alternate recruit, he ended up drawing the short stick and was stationed in Petersburg.

"When I say I drew the short stick, I just mean that nobody knew about Petersburg," Litster said. "I thought I was going to move around the state, but I came to Petersburg and never left. It's a hidden gem. There is no reason to leave this place."

Litster said the only reason to leave would be out of boredom, but even that would be selfish.

"I have seen all the fisheries. I have seen all the hunting," Litster said. "I have seen the stupidest things people can do and I've seen the best of people here. But any place I moved to would be selfish. The schools are so great here, my wife can absolutely work anywhere she wants to, and the living is good."

His first trip to Petersburg was in 2006, and since then he has transitioned into living on an island with less than 3,000 people. The hardest part, he said, is seeing people in public who he might have just given a ticket to.

"The person who you just cited for some crazy fishing or hunting offense is the person I see when I pick my kids up from school or at the grocery store," Litster said. "But I don't think anyone really holds it against me."

But he does know local police officers who grew up in Petersburg who have a hard time interacting with the public.

"Me, being from somewhere else, I don't have those kinds of allegiances," Litster said. "I can totally not worry about that."

It was moose hunting season recently, and his daily patrol included checking to make sure hunters had correct licensing. There is also a no-shooting zone along most of Mitkof Highway that extends a quarter mile away from the road. If he sees a car pulled over with no one inside, he suspects the driver saw a moose and was tracking it.

On the same day as the Kake shooting, Litster was later driving down the highway when he saw three cars parked alongside the road. They were all empty, so he waited for the presumed hunters to return.

One after another, they told the same story: A moose crossed the road, so they tried to track it but couldn't find it. When Litster asked them if they were aware of the no-shooting zone, they said yes, but they were going to shoot it beyond the quarter-mile restricted area.

Litster said even that would have been illegal. Any moose that a hunter pursues inside the no-shooting zone may not then be shot outside the zone, he said.

"All my rules and regulations are written down," Litster said. "Commercial fishermen know what the rules are, too, and if I catch you doing something wrong, you don't have any reason to complain."