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"Alaska State Troopers" TV Show Will Not Have Another Season

The Department of Public Safety announced Tuesday that the state will not be participating in another season of National Geographic’s tv show “Alaska State Troopers.”

After five seasons, the real Alaska State Troopers will not be starring in the popular tv show. Spokesperson for the Alaska State Troopers Beth Ipsen says although the show brought a lot of attention to the department and the state, the troopers had to consider if they wanted to continue their participation.

“After every season we have to sign an agreement so basically every season we’ve kind of weighed the pros and cons before signing on for another season. And after five seasons it just felt that it was time to kind of refocus on public safety without having outside distractions.”

Ipsen says after National Geographic originally pitched their idea, DPS would enter into a contract with the network.  She says the networks have to buy a special kind of insurance for the two camera men that followed the troopers and DPS was not compensated for their time and resources in any way other than exposure. 

“For us when we entered into this agreement with National Geographic and the production company we have to look at the different reasons. Ok it’s going to be great exposure for us, may increase recruitment but we also have to take into consideration that this may be a logistical problem with having a film crew of two riding along with our troopers. So it’s one of those things we decided that ok is this a good idea before we entered into an agreement.”

At first, Ipsen says, there was a rise in interested recruits.  However, she says although there were a lot of people interested in applying to be a trooper, not many were actually qualified.

“I do know that there are recruits and troopers that actually have seen the show. I know one trooper, his family saw the show and suggested he become a state trooper and he did and he’s a trooper. Whether that helped with recruits, I think it did, but like I said I don’t know if we had a lot more qualified applicants applying.”

Ipsen says although the department and the troopers knew the job they did, the show provided the world to see as well.