Newest police officer moved from Hoonah

Wrangell's newest police officer started work last week. Yuriy Bezzubenko, formerly of Hoonah, North Carolina and Ukraine, said he joined the Wrangell Police Department in pursuit of new opportunities.

"Wrangell offered more opportunities for training, thus I came to Wrangell and I've decided to stay here," he said. "It was a bigger town, had a lot more people, also the police department was a lot bigger." Wrangell has almost three times the population of Hoonah, about 160 miles to the northwest.

Bezzubenko was born in Ukraine and said he immigrated to the United States when he was 13 years old. He has spent most of his life in North Carolina. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served four years. As a security management chief in the Marines, he learned a lot of skills that he is bringing to his new career in law enforcement, he said, such as gathering and presenting information in an understandable way.

He decided on becoming a police officer because it offered something closer to what he wanted in a job.

"What I was looking for was an ability to help people and help to directly influence, for example, a person who is in need of help," Bezzubenko said. "So being able to aid the individual if need be, to be that one guiding hand. ... Law enforcement is kind of the work opportunity I was looking for."

He first learned about a job opportunity in Hoonah from Rick Groshong, who has been police chief there since 2018 and before that was a police officer in Wrangell. Bezzubenko worked with the Hoonah police for a little over a year, he said. He heard about the opening in Wrangell from Assembly Member Terry Courson.

He has only been in his new position for about a week, but Bezzubenko said he has found people are friendly and his co-workers very professional.

"We, as law enforcement professionals, we are supposed to be professional at all times," he said. "We treat every single person equally. We treat them with dignity, respect, compassion, and we do our job to a point of where we're trying to preserve the peace in the community, as well as the well-being of every individual we come in contact with."