When your bedroom is below sea level on a tugboat, you get used to the sound of belugas, Justin Ryan says, but it’s people keeping him up at night.
“When they have their loud music and stuff and [are] screaming, you can hear it right here,” he said from the tugboat he sleeps in.
Needles left at the boat launch. Courtesy Justin Ryan
Ryan works for Cook Inlet Tug and Barge, one week on, one week off. For six months out of the year, the harbor is his front yard. During a quick walk around the parking lot, he pointed out broken glass bottles and discarded drug paraphernalia.
Ryan said few people treat the area at the small boat launch like the park it’s supposed to be. With poor lighting, it’s a popular place for people to party by the dozen after the downtown bars close.
“Seeing this place get trashed so much and all the crime and drug activity down here, it’s really sad,” he said.
A woman who serves as a “park host” lives in a RV and calls police to report criminal behavior, but she’ll soon pack up and leave for the winter.
Cook Inlet Tug and Barge has put up lights where employees park, surveillance cameras and signs, but it’s not enough. Ryan said every one of his coworkers’ cars has been vandalized.
Ryan will be speaking about the problem at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting for the second time. He said last year when he brought it to their attention, he hoped they would do something, but he hasn’t seen a change.
“It was basically a lot of lip service, it seemed like,” he said. “I came with a handful of solutions and not one of them got implemented.”
He said he suggested better lighting and putting in a gate. That would help deter criminal activity, he said, and force the boat ramp users to pay the $5 fee they often ignore.
“They’re paying their fees, they’re paying for the gate — I believe it would take care of everything,” Ryan said.
Crime data from the Anchorage Police Department doesn’t show an uptick in crime at the small boat launch. From Jan. 1 to Sept. 12 of 2015, police were called to the location 73 times and made nine police reports. APD also reported officers went to the area without being called 124 times for security or welfare checks.
Looking at the same time frame this year, APD said officers have been called to the location 55 times, filed seven incident reports and made 87 trips to the area to perform security checks.
Ryan said those numbers seem “far fetched,” and that he never sees police there unless they’ve been called. He also said sometimes officers don’t know where the boat launch is and can take hours to show up.
APD spokesperson Renee Oistad stands by the numbers, saying they’ve patrolled there 87 times this year without being called, but said Ryan’s claim about slow response times could be true if their officers are tied up elsewhere with a higher priority incident.
While the numbers appear to be going down, the nature of the reports is becoming more violent. Oistad said there were no reports of violent crimes for 2015, but so far this year, they have responded to an assault and an incident where shots were fired.
That’s what has Ryan and his crew members scared for their safety.
“Somebody’s gonna get shot or killed, one of the two,” he said. “It’s just inevitable. It’s only a matter of time.”
Ryan said there have been two instances recently of people firing guns at the boat launch. APD could only confirm one.
Oistad said it’s possible people aren’t reporting crimes there as much this year as they did in 2015, and that could explain why the numbers show the crime rate going down, but Ryan said he sees it as getting worse.
Since there’s been a municipal election since his last visit to the Assembly Chambers, Ryan said he’s hoping new faces will mean a different outcome this time.
KTVA 11′s Daniella Rivera can be reached via email or on Facebook and Twitter.
