There’s plywood covering some windows at the entrance to the Kotzebue police department building on Third Street.
Police said the windows were smashed on March 16, and have charged a 33-year-old Kotzebue woman with a felony for it.
The woman could not be reached for comment, and her public defender did not respond to a request for comment.
Officer Jacob Everts wrote up his account of what happened in a charging document. He and another officer contacted the woman in the early hours that day. Everts said she intended to go to the hotel, where she had been criminally trespassed earlier that night.
The Maniilaq Health Center had also asked her to be escorted away earlier that night.
Police Chief Christopher Cook said in an emailed statement that officers had transported the woman to her home earlier in the night.
Everts said the woman told them she didn’t want to go back home and had nowhere else to go. Outside temperatures were around -10 degrees.
Maniilaq Health Center operates a homeless shelter in Kotzebue, but locks its doors at 11 p.m. each night. There is also Maniilaq Family Crisis Center, which can sometimes shelter women experiencing domestic violence or sexual assault.
Shortly after Everts and the woman spoke, police dispatchers told him that she was outside of the Kotzebue police department building. Cook said that she used her cell phone to break the windows. When Everts arrived, he wrote that the woman admitted breaking them.
He estimated the windows’ value at $1,200.
The woman was arrested, jailed, and then released on a $600 performance bond. Her next court appearance is scheduled for April 30 at the Kotzebue Courthouse.
Cook said the investigation is ongoing.
