Turnover Among Alaska Village Public Safety Officers: An Examination of the Factors Associated with Attrition

摘要

The motto of Alaska's Village Public Safety Officer (VPSO) program is 'Last Frontier, First Responders.' For the sole public safety presence in a number of geographically isolated Alaska Native villages, this motto is fitting. These VPSOs can be seen as public safetyjacks-of-all-trades. They are responsible for a number of tasks including law enforcement, firefighting, water safety, emergency medical assistance, and search and rescue. When troublebrews in the villages they serve, VPSOs are indeed the first to deal with it.Perhaps for a number of reasons, a better description of the VPSOs should be kamikazecops. VPSOs have working conditions unlike those faced by others responsible for lawenforcement. These officers usually serve in a village by themselves and the villages they serve in are not connected to any road system and are sometimes an hour or more away by air fromany back-up. Not only do VPSOs serve by themselves with back-up far away, they do sowithout the protection of a firearm. VPSOs are expected to be on-call 24-hours-a-day,7-days-a-week in order to deal with the problems that arise in what are some of the mostviolent-and-accident-prone places in the nation. For this job VPSOs receive wages and benefitsthat are substantially lower than what is afforded those with similar responsibilities elsewhereacross the state.It is not surprising, then, that one of the main problems that the VPSO program has facedis officer turnover. Since 1983, the first year for which adequate records are available, turnoverin the VPSO program has averaged 36 percent per year. In other words, for every 100 VPSOs tohave served in a calendar year 36 either quit or were fired. This turnover rate is unlike that seenanywhere else in the public safety sector of the labor force. The rates of VPSO turnover areactually closer to those of employees working in sales or entertainment than they are to police officers or fire fighters.This report presents the results of a study that was designed and carried out to understand the factors associated with these tremendously high turnover rates.