FBI and Local Authorities Make Arrest on Drug Charges

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

The City of Kodiak has struggled with robberies, theft, and other drug-related crime over the last few years.

Local and federal authorities signed an agreement in 2014 to try to clamp down on it. The partnership, called the Safe Streets Task Force, focuses on rooting out drug traffickers in the community.

The FBI and local forces tackled another case on Tuesday.

KMXT was there when the FBI and local authorities made an arrest at a house just off E. Rezanof Drive.

A woman drives by and yells out to Iris Campbell.

Campbell lives across from the house and has been filming the arrest.

She says over the year she’s been living in the area, she’s called crime stoppers, troopers, and the Kodiak Police Department on the people passing in and out of the house.

“Oh, it’s ongoing drug sales there day in, day out, and it’s about time they finally took somebody out of there with it.”

Other neighbors on the scene say the house is known for drug activity.

They say people stay the night and leave, and they’ve seen signs of other unsavory behavior. They mention car theft, signs of domestic abuse, like screaming and fighting, and possible overdoses or worse.

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Kurt Ormberg was on the scene.

He says the FBI came in from Anchorage to help local forces act on a search and arrest warrant.

He declined to share details of the case because it’s ongoing, but says authorities found both methamphetamine and heroin in connection with the house.

He says he’s seen a change in the most commonly trafficked drugs over the five years he’s been in Alaska.

“So, when I first got up here it was a lot of methamphetamine. That has shifted now, I’d say almost an 80 percent shift where it’s almost all opiate based, heroin based.”

He says drugs lead to crime, and Kodiak is a microcosm of the drug epidemic.

“Kodiak is a population of under 7,000, so when you put in perspective the amount of hard drugs that we’re seeing there, based on the population, there’s an issue.”

He says they worked alongside the Kodiak Police Department and the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service on several recent cases.