Alaska State Troopers is a reality TV program similar to COPS, filmed by National Geographic and set in Alaska.
Premiering on October 14, 2009, the show ran for seven seasons until the state government pulled the plug on the series, considering it a distraction to the troopers' work; the final new episode aired on April 15, 2015. The entire series run is available on DVD, as well as re-runs airing on the National Geographic Channel to this day. Alaska State Troopers focuses on the interactions of Troopers and the public. In the first season parts of several episodes also focused on the Anchorage and Fairbanks police departments. In addition Village Public Safety Officers are shown several times each season.
Much like the TV show COPS, segments often start with complaints, transition to brief investigations, and end with arrests of suspects. The show also follows some of the more unusual policing tasks in Alaska, such as dealing with vast distances and investigating dead moose. Locally in Fairbanks, the show is sometimes referred to "Alaskans behaving badly".
Examples:
- The Alcoholic: A recurring issue for the Troopers to deal with, particularly in the more remote and northerly areas.
- Canine Companion: They sometimes follow K-9 units, which have mostly been used for detecting drugs.
- Cop Show: As you'd expect, being basically COPS in Alaska.
- Everyone Is Armed: It's Alaska...they have bears and moose.
- Fair Cop: One of the male Troopers in season one said on camera that the hardest thing about moving to Alaska and becoming a Trooper for him, was lack of a family life. The Nat Geo webpage explains that he got many hundreds of emails from female viewers from this.
- I Fought the Law and the Law Won: No one on camera has been able to out-run, out-fight, or out-gun the Troopers. Of course the show is edited prior to airing so...
- There was one incident in season 2 where they caught only two of four kids who fled from a car into the woods. One of the Troopers later joked that hiding in the gross underbrush was probably worse than a night in jail anyway.
- Police Code for Everything: Listening to the Dispatch over the radio in the background - the AK Troopers have a 10-code for a Moose stuck in a Greenhouse!
