WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) - Working in law enforcement in Williston and Williams County has its highs and lows. The non-stop pace and constant exposure to the effects of drug and alcohol abuse can be draining, but if one thing comes easy for police officers here, it’s gaining experience.
Both police officer Kristiina Ravaska and sheriff’s deputy Justin Roberts came from Minnesota to work here. Their expectations were high, and the job has delivered.
“I’ve wanted experience and I’ve gotten experience,” Ravaska, 30, said. “All the calls I go on are different.”
New officers here get broken in quickly, the Williston Herald (https://bit.ly/1MKP3w1 ) reported. With both city and county law enforcement struggling to keep up with a ballooning population, officers are often the ones who see firsthand what can happen when someone hits rock bottom.
“We deal with a lot of people who aren’t from here,” Roberts said. “People who are at the lowest point in their lives — that’s who we’re dealing with.”
According to Job Service North Dakota, 64 percent of the jobs in Williston are in the oil field, which employs about 15,300 workers. The influx of workers has posed its challenges, police officials say, but at the same time they balk at the Wild West characterization that’s been assigned to the city by media from around the world.
“From what I see these individuals are very hardworking, many of them are trying to save their homes in other parts of the nation,” Lt. Det. David Peterson of the Williston Police Department said. “You have a certain percentage who are going to commit crimes . but I think that Williston has not gotten a fair shake with the national media.”
Roberts, 28, has had camera crews from as far away as Denmark ride along with him, seeking to document the mayhem that reportedly accompanied the oil boom. The Williston Police Department, swamped with requests from journalists asking to accompany officers, now frequently says no.
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One of Ravaska’s first experiences with the adrenaline that comes with a gun call came when she was still in training nearly a year and a half ago.
“It was literally one of my first days sitting in a patrol car,” she said.
A man had barricaded himself inside his home after he’d shot at his wife, and police had the house surrounded when he shot himself. That incident stands out in Ravaska’s mind not only as one of her first experiences with violence as a law enforcement officer, but also an example of the range of calls she responds to here.
“We tend to say one year of service here is like three years of service in other areas,” Peterson said. “We are definitely responding to a high call volume and a wide variety of calls for service.”
Roberts, a three-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, said he’s gone on so many calls that it’s hard to remember many of them. One incident, though, nearly hit home. His brother, a Williston Police Department officer at the time, was looking into a report of gunfire when a man began shooting at him. Roberts heard his call for help over the radio and was among those who raced to the scene, where eventually the man was wounded and no one else was hurt.
“To hear him yelling like that on the radio, it just sticks in my head,” he said.
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On a recent Friday night, Ravaska got a report of a blue pickup truck swerving all over the road as it was heading into town. She drove up West Broadway, but there wasn’t any sign of the truck.
Most of her traffic stops are for speeding, running stop signs and expired tags, she says. Sitting at a red light, she ran the plate number of a truck sitting ahead of her. It checked out, and she headed down Second Avenue toward downtown. Within half a mile, she pulled a white pickup over for running a stop sign and wrote the driver a $20 ticket.
On a separate Friday night, Roberts’ shift had a similar start.
He was heading out of town on West Front Street when he pulled a Jeep over for going 15 miles over the speed limit. As Roberts was figuring out how to enter a driver’s license into the new Williams County law enforcement computer system, a car passed with a few of the driver’s friends inside. They waved and shouted before Roberts got out with the speeding ticket.
He started to drive west, but soon turned on his lights for a red pickup going nearly 60 miles per hour in a 35 zone. He pulled the pickup over in the Mississippi BBQ parking lot, where the driver told him he was on his way to meet his friends in his dad’s truck.
Farther up the road, he spotted a Chevrolet Blazer parked along the side of 140th Avenue. No one was inside, but he opened the unlocked back door to make sure. It was full of clothes and boxes. “Someone’s whole life,” he says, before putting an abandoned vehicle tag on it.
Back on Highway 2, he pulled up behind an old pickup sitting on the side of the road.
A man was standing on the passenger side, apparently looking for something inside the truck. Roberts approached cautiously. The man told him he was waiting for a friend, and assured him he wasn’t driving. Roberts checks his license, which was suspended, for warrants, while the man waited anxiously.
“Since I didn’t see you driving, I’m not going to arrest you,” Roberts told him.
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The difference between the duties of the sheriff’s office and those of the police department can almost literally be measured in miles.
Sheriff’s office deputies are responsible for about 2,200 square miles, much of which is only accessible by gravel roads. In contrast, Williston police cover about eight square miles.
Deputies can take half an hour or more to respond to an emergency call, speeding down rural highways with flashing lights and screaming sirens for long stretches, while city police are usually on scene within minutes.
Roberts is used to the miles, and knows the shortest routes across the county.
When he was assigned to check out a burglar alarm in Lukenbill estates in the north central part of the county, he quickly navigated the distance, gravel and bumps before determining that it was a false alarm.
Ravaska’s first emergency call of the night was less than a mile away, and involved an arrest. When the dispatcher announced that a car had hit another car several times in the Walmart parking lot, she made a sharp U-turn and found a couple in the parking lot standing outside a slightly damaged car. They pointed out the driver who hit them, and Ravaska pursued her for several hundred feet before the driver pulled over into a parking space.
Ravaska got out and leaned over the car. There was a short tussle, and a young woman wearing sunglasses and a red tank top emerged from the driver’s seat.
By this time another officer had shown up, the two talked briefly with the woman before putting her in handcuffs. They loaded her into the police SUV as the woman protested.
Ravaska stood beside the open door and tried to talk to her.
“Alyssa, will you chat with me for a little bit?” she asked.
There was silence, and sniffles. “I’ve never been in cuffs,” the woman said.
“It’s probably not a very pleasant situation. Will you do a few tests for me?” I know you’ve been drinking,” Ravaska said.
The driver refused. She saw her friend standing nearby and asked her to call her mom.
Ravaska tried several more times to convince the woman to do the DUI tests, but each time she refused.
The ride to the jail was nearly silent, with the sound of quiet crying in the back seat.
Then there was a lull, and Ravaska drove through several neighborhoods, stopping to pull over a pickup truck for peeling out of at an intersection.
During Roberts’ shift, it got quiet for a time, too. A call about a dead deer on Highway 2 came in, and another deputy responded. He turned onto County Road Nine, where a car going over 60 miles per hour passed, so Roberts pulled it over.
So far, grappling with the new computer system seems to be the most action of the night.
On Ravaska’s patrol, the dispatcher said a woman has been involved in an ATV wreck on 11th Avenue West and was injured. Sirens wailing, she arrived first on the scene.
The mangled ATV was up on two wheels and tangled in a fence, while five men were huddled around the driver, who was on the ground. Ravaska ran to her and tried to help until the ambulance arrived.
It turned out that her injuries weren’t as serious as first feared, and the driver, who is 18, was taken to the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center, where Ravaska mets her and gave her a ticket.
It was almost midnight when Roberts got a call about a man with a gun scaring people in Grenora. A father called 911 after his teenage daughter ran home and said she and her cousin had nearly been run over by a man who’d threatened to kill them.
Roberts turned on his lights and sirens for the half-hour drive to the small town.
“I know this guy, and I know he does have a gun,” he said.
After meeting briefly at a gas station near the town to discuss a plan of action, Roberts and several other deputies found the man in his van on the street, and ordered him out, guns drawn. He protested loudly but complied, putting his hands up and leaning against the van.
The tense moment passed once he was in handcuffs, and he was eventually arrested and loaded into the back of a sheriff’s office pickup for the long drive back to the jail.
He could be heard over the radio, shouting at the deputy who was at the wheel. The deputy pulled over to help him adjust the handcuffs, and the drive continued.
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City police, especially on the weekends, are kept busy by the bars. When they have time, Ravaska says, often officers will stand on the street outside bars in an attempt to discourage mischief at closing time.
She spent the second half of her shift cruising downtown. There was a man who wouldn’t leave DK’s, but the situation was handled quickly without any arrests.
A woman called from the same bar and said she was assaulted by another woman, but the altercation was minor and officers couldn’t find the attacker.
Ravaska stopped to talk to an intoxicated man hanging around outside the American Legion, but he wasn’t making trouble and she moved on.
It’s quiet outside the strip clubs around 1:30 a.m. A group of officers stood around, and a friendly patron greeted them.
Ravaska drove away and spotted a man urinating in a parking lot beside a truck. She stopped and yelled out the window at him, and when he didn’t respond, she got out and confronted him and his group of friends, telling them not to urinate in public.
There were a few more stops at downtown bars for reports of rowdy drunks, and then Ravaska headed back to the American Legion, where she told an intoxicated man to “get out of here before I take you with me.”
The last call of the night was for a dog barking in a neighborhood. Ravaska drove to the address, and hears nothing but silence.
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Information from: Williston Herald, https://www.willistonherald.com
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