Alaska State Troopers information

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Alaska State Troopers" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Division of Alaska State Troopers
Patch of the Alaska State Troopers
Badge of the Alaska State Troopers
Flag of the Alaska State Troopers
Common name	Alaska State Troopers
Abbreviation	AST
Motto	"Loyalty, Integrity, Courage"
Agency overview
Formed	1967; 57 years ago (1967)
Preceding agencies	Alaska Highway Patrol (1941–1953) Alaska Territorial Police (1953–1959) Alaska State Police (1959–1967)
Jurisdictional structure
Operations jurisdiction	Alaska, U.S.
Alaska State Trooper Detachments
Size	663,268 square miles (1,717,900 km2)
Population	736,556 (2022)[1]
General nature	Civilian police
Operational structure
Headquarters	Anchorage, Alaska
Troopers	365 (official, as of 2022) [2]
Civilian members	216
Agency executive	Colonel Mo Hughes, Director, AST
Parent agency	Alaska Department of Public Safety
Bureaus	2
Detachments	5
Website
https://dps.alaska.gov/AST/Home

The Alaska State Troopers, officially the Division of Alaska State Troopers (AST), is the state police agency of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is a division of the Alaska Department of Public Safety (DPS). The AST is a full-service law enforcement agency that handles both traffic and criminal law enforcement. The AST is also involved in apprehending fugitives as part of the Alaska Fugitive Task Force, an inter-agency collaborative of Alaska police departments that cooperates with police agencies throughout the United States and less commonly with Interpol in apprehending wanted men and women. Unlike many lower 48 states, the AST also serves as Alaska’s primary environmental law enforcement agency; troopers assigned to the AST’s Division of Alaska Wildlife Troopers are known as "Alaska Wildlife Troopers" and primarily serve as game wardens, although they retain the same powers as other Alaskan state troopers.

Because Alaska has no counties, therefore no county police or sheriffs, in its constitution, the troopers also handle civil papers and mental health custody orders and serve as police through most of rural Alaska. Alaska does have boroughs, which have some similarities but with the lesser powers of lower-48 U.S. counties, but only the North Slope Borough Police Department truly functions similarly to a lower-48 county police agency, thus relieving AST of the need to be the primary police agency in this particular region. With jurisdiction across all 663,268 square miles (1,717,856 square kilometres) of Alaska, Alaskan state troopers are the most geographically extended law enforcement officers within the United States, apart from federal officers. They have little, if any, local backup. Within the entire State of Alaska, only about 1,300 full-time sworn law enforcement officers patrol a state 1/5th the size of the entire Lower 48. Other than troopers and state park rangers (peace officers employed by Alaska’s Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation), local officers remain in their communities except in extreme emergencies. This includes the only metropolitan police agency in Alaska, the Anchorage Police Department,with almost 500 officers. The remaining officers are the over 300 Alaska troopers and smaller municipal agencies,which have around 50 in towns like the state capital of Juneau or the second largest town in the state, Fairbanks. The remaining full-time officers serve in small agencies with anywhere from one to ten officers on average. The Alaska State Troopers are assisted in their rural policing duties by Village Public Safety Officers (VPSOs). VPSOs are, as of 2014, fully sworn and armed peace officers who handle basic law enforcement in extremely remote and/or small Alaskan communities; Alaskan state troopers travel to these communities to assist VPSOs as needed.

The DPS is headed by a Commissioner appointed by the Governor. This person is a civilian administrator, though historically he was a career law enforcement officer and administrator. The Commissioner, if a sworn officer upon being appointed as such, may be appointed a "Special Alaska State Trooper" to maintain police powers. The Alaska State Troopers (AST) and Alaska Wildlife Troopers (AWT) are headed by ranking officers with the rank of Colonel.