A small Alaskan community has made headlines after a team of journalists revealed that all its police officers are convicted criminals.
All seven police officers working in Stebbins, Alaska have pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges within the past decade.
The community’s current police chief, ProPublica revealed, admitted to throwing a teen relative to the ground and threatening to kill her, just one year before he was hired into the police force.
Other offices hired have criminal records which list crimes such as sexual assault and spitting at police officers.
Stebbins is not an isolated case: at least 14 cities in Alaska have officers with criminal records, the investigation found. In the vast majority of cases, city governments turned a blind eye and did not report the recruits to state regulators.
Finding people willing to be police in Alaska has proven to be such a problem that last month US attorney general William Barr pledged $10.5 million in funding and declared a law enforcement emergency for rural Alaska.