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Anchorage police have killed four people in the city since May.

One of them a 16 year old girl, prompting fear of police encounters for some parents.

A lot of her video game costumes do include having some sort of weapon or gun or sword or fake knife, and even though they're obviously fake, if you're far enough away, how how obvious is the fake, right?

What is the best way forward to keep order in society while ensuring that residents trust their local police force?

We'll discuss it right now on Alaska Insight.

Good evening.

The job of law enforcement officers isn't an easy one.

Police are often dealing with people in crisis who may be a threat to themselves or others.

Decisions about how to best control a situation are sometimes made in seconds in dangerous settings.

Tonight we'll look at recent fatal encounters between law enforcement and Alaska residents and examine ideas for helping officers do their jobs in ways that can de-escalate negative encounters with the public.

Before we get to that discussion, here are some of the recent top stories from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news network.

Alaska State Troopers have released the names of four people killed when a plane they were flying in crashed short of the runway in Saint Mary's late Sunday.

Troopers report that two Alaskans died in the crash.

Pilot and Chugiak resident Scott Brilliant and Benjamin Sweeney of Sterling, two out of state people, were also killed.

Ohio resident Mario Gioiello and South Carolina resident Caleb Swortzel.

the Cessna 207 was owned and operated by Bethel based air carrier Ute Commuter Service, and was enroute from Bethel to the lower Yukon River community at the time of the crash.

National Transportation Safety Board Alaska Chief Clint Johnson says there are still no details available about what may have caused the fatal plane crash.

He expects a preliminary report sometime next week.

The amount for this year's permanent fund dividend has been officially set for $1,702.

The number was quietly announced by the state Department of Revenue on Thursday.

Without the oversize checks or press conferences that have typically accompanied the announcement in the past.

The total includes a base dividend amount of $1,403.83, plus just under $300 in the form of an energy relief payment approved by the legislature last year.

Residents who applied electronically for direct deposit should start seeing it in their accounts on October 3rd.

All other dividends who are set to go out on October 26th.

Anchorage officials are close to approving a contract to provide private rooms for up to 500 people without homes to use as emergency emergency shelter this winter.

This will be the city's third winter in a row, paying for private rooms to be used as part of a winter shelter system.

It's a way to keep people from losing limbs or freezing to death outside, and potentially get vulnerable people on a path to stable housing.

This time, there will be significantly more of these beds for a significantly smaller target population.

Local homelessness service providers now estimate the number of people living out of tents, cars or other situations considered unsheltered in Anchorage is about 500.

You can find the full version of these and many more stories on our website.

Alaskapublic.org.

Or by downloading the Alaska Public Media app on your phone.

Now on to tonight's discussion.

Alaska's biggest police force has had an unusual string of seven incidents this year, where its officers have opened fire in the line of duty, killing four people.

Alaska Public Media's Jeremy Hsieh reports.

The shootings have renewed scrutiny of the Anchorage Police Department, as well as public outcry for reforms and more accountability.

I'd like to be in a place where everyone can tell their children, call the police if you've got a problem.

Anchorage resident and mother of two Sheila Kerrigan worries about how interactions between her children and police could go wrong.

It's always scared me.

I've never known what would happen if the police were called for any reason.

Kerrigan's kids are both grown adults with special needs.

My children are both neurodiverse geeks.

They're nerds.

As in, they're into video games, anime, and cosplay.

Both like to dress up and go out as characters they like.

A lot of her video game costumes do include having some sort of weapon or gun or so weird or fake knife, and even though they're obviously fake, if you're far enough away, how could how obvious is the fake right here?

Anytime.

Kerrigan especially worries about her son William, because he's over six feet tall and weighs around 250 pounds and tends to freeze and become nonverbal.

If he gets scared, she's heard speculation that 16 year old easterly off a size was a factor when police shot and killed her last month.

Police said they were called to the family's apartment because the author was threatening others with a knife.

My son's bigger than she is.

Is that going to be the excuse?

That he was armed with being big and brown.

Kerrigan and her kids are Athabaskan.

Something just has to go a tiny bit wrong for it to be our kids.

And that's not fair.

Kerrigan was among about 60 people who met up recently at an Anchorage church for a community discussion about public safety in the wake of the police shootings.

There appeared to be consensus to lobby the city's elected officials to create a civilian police oversight panel.

There was also a collective interest in ongoing funding for teams that specifically work emergency calls for people in mental health crises.

After easterly off killing last month, which was the Anchorage Police Department's fourth fatal shooting this year, Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance addressed the city to the.

Family and to the community, asking questions you deserve answers.

You deserve action, and you deserve accountability.

It's really precedent for this time period for this many different shooting incidents.

We've never had this many officer involved shootings in a compressed time like this.

LaFrance and Police Chief Sean Case laid out several commitments, including a third party review of the incident.

A new Community advisory Committee on policing and a report on the last 15 years of police shootings.

Beyond the statistics case, says they're digging into details from past cases and looking at the impacts of past policy and training changes.

The review isn't complete yet, but case says one factor is apparent.

So it's not just, you know, officers being involved in and shootings.

It's the public as well.

So an increase in gun violence overall, you know, and we respond to the scene and it's a there's a weapon involved which is common.

You know there's with a lot of weapons, a lot of guns in Anchorage.

But we've seen an increase in the use of firearms in the commission of crimes and assaults.

Chief Case is noncommittal about a new empowered civilian oversight board.

There are several factors that have led up to this point.

So is Darryl Evans, who heads the police labor union.

They both say the city's elected officials are empowered.

Civilians who oversee the police department.

Typically, oversight is kind of backward looking, looking at it, incident after it's taken place.

I'd rather see the time and the money spent on forward looking programs that can try and head these things off before the police have to get involved.

Like Shala Kerrigan, Evans says he also wants people to feel comfortable calling the police to that.

mother, I would say, please call us if you if you need help.

And please provide as much information ahead of our arrival as you can.

Statewide, there have been 13 police shooting incidents this year.

That's seven in Anchorage, plus one each in Juneau, Wasilla, Kasilof,Marshall Eek and Gamble.

The state's Office of Special Prosecutions, which works out of this courthouse, reviews each of those cases for potential criminal charges against the officers involved.

The office has completed eight reviews in those cases, and so far in each one is determined that the officers were legally justified in their uses of force.

In Anchorage, I'm Jeremy Hsieh.

Joining me tonight to discuss the work being done to address concerns over how and when lethal force should be used during police interactions with the public, is Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case and attorney Rich Kirchner, who is retired from 45 years as a federal public defender and is the current chair of the Alaska Black Caucus Justice Committee.

Welcome, both of you.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for being here.

Chief case, the story that we led off with showed the fear and mistrust that some community members have regarding whether or not to call the police when they're in crisis.

shala Kerrigan's concerns about her adults children with special needs is a valid fear, especially when her son freezes when he's fearful.

It seems like a bad convergence.

What do you want citizens to know about this type of concern and what what message should you give to them at that community gathering?

Well, it's sad to hear that because, you know, we have dedicated men and women in the Anchorage Police Department that do this job to serve the public.

And so when we hear from community members that they have a fear of calling the police, and we get into this business to help people, that's the most common thing that our officers say when they, when they join the police department is they want to help, help the public in the community.

So it's sad to hear that.

And I think the best way that we can change that perspective in that view is direct contact with our officers.

And members of the community.

When we have contact with members of the community and the way we interact, the conversations that we have.

How much compassion and professionalism we have.

That's what changes that narrative and that fear and that concern.

So more interaction, more contact, particularly non-police related contacts is a way to move forward.

And are you thinking in terms of ways to do that, to have more, neutral, calm engagement events with the public?

Yeah, I mean, it struggles with staffing.

And being 61 officers down is a challenge for the department.

But even conversations like this is a way to provide at least some communication with the public.

It's not direct, but, but they at least get to hear some of what's happening within the police department.

And we have an ongoing group of different activities that we do, whether it's a Citizens academy or, you know, a coffee with a cop or any event that you want the police department to show up at.

I certainly say no.

And the department says no.

And so we are either going to send officers or myself directly so that we have those opportunities to engage with different groups and communities in Anchorage.

Chief, you noted a rise in gun violence in Anchorage.

What are you seeing?

Yeah, we've seen an increase.

we've seen an increase in gun violence over the last several months.

last 28 days, we've we've seen a decrease of just over 7%.

So that's positive.

but it's only 28 days, so we're not going to call that a trend just yet.

We will, we'll continue to monitor that.

But that kind of ebbs and flows.

We, you know, we see increases and decreases throughout the course of time.

we have a lot of contact.

the Anchorage Police Department does with people who are, carrying, firearms.

but many, many, many, most of the time, it doesn't result in any sort of violence or any use of force at all.

we have compliance.

We have officers that are that are skilled in communicating with somebody that does have a weapon so that they can place it someplace where it can be rendered safe during the conversation in the contact.

And then, and then we have their send the person on their way if there's no criminal activity or, or arrest them with no, no use of force or no incident.

So, they're highly trained.

The officers are dealing with those types of situations.

And just following up here quickly.

You mentioned that there has been a decrease in the last 28 days, but in this compressed timeframe of seven shootings, four deaths, do you consider this just a tragic anomaly or do you think something else may be happening?

I think it is an anomaly, and but it's our reaction to the anomaly, both as a community and a police department that's important.

And because it's a compressed time frame and because we want this type of activity to stop, it's these conversations.

It's the officers and supervisors slowing things down as much as they can so they can create more time and distance.

And approaching these calls for service.

With that in mind, and it's also, the engagement of the public and understanding what we're doing and, what our expectations are and what we expect of the public when we have engagement interaction with them.

All right.

Thank you.

Rich, talk about how that community meeting came together and and what your takeaways were from what you heard from the community.

Well, I'm a member of the coalition for justice, Alaska Coalition for justice.

And that coalition is a a number of community organizations that came together on public safety issues.

We started in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.

And we've been discussing, you know, just the community organizations and put in, community public safety issues originally in the last three years, first three years of that was talk about body cameras.

And but during that process with the prior administration was certainly with a lack of transparency.

And where did the what was taking so long for body cameras to get on the street?

Now, any kind of discussion with public safety in the community, anywhere in this country, it's about transparency and accountability.

And so I guess we're now looking at the accountability part of that.

And, we over the last the experience with body cameras in the last ministration, that's when we started talking about a civilian review board.

What that would mean exactly is something that would have to be worked with, with the with the chief and the, and the the and the legislators and and the administration.

So but that's our aim right now is to kind of add civilian oversight to the process.

for the community and in our organization, our coalition is the Alaska Black Caucus.

It's the, native movement.

It's the Pacific Island, Pacific community of Alaska.

It's at work, the public and and, interest and research group, it's, ACP, it's Alaska ACLU.

And and these are just some of the organizations that are represented in this, and our latest endeavor.

Which I know there's, a lot of controversy about when body cam footage should be released.

You have concerns about how that is happening.

what makes sense to you for timing?

Should it be immediate and unedited?

Or should there be review by legal authorities first?

Well, we you know, I understand that there's it's complicated.

There are issues that the APD has to deal with.

But, I think we advocated for a ten day, limit originally for that to be released and all those issues to be addressed.

you know, right now, it's a longer timeline.

But, what's important is that the information is released right now.

What's released to the public is, what is an edited version?

but if the raw footage were released to the public in a timely fashion, which, you know, I would think between 10 and 30 days, then, that would probably address a lot of the community concerns.

Chief case, what is the process currently and what are the considerations that you have to go through before it can be released to the public?

So the process for after an officer involved shooting is, within two weeks, the family members of whoever the officers fired the weapon at a can request that they see the video footage and typically what they will see when they see that video footage is that edited, kind of produced video that has the call for service.

The call that came in to the dispatch center.

What information was provided to officers, officers arriving on scene, all the way through the incident and so that so they can have as many questions answered as possible instead of just seeing the raw footage of just the incident itself.

Can they see the raw footage if they request?

the raw footage is we are now releasing it at the same time when we're released to the public.

So the public gets that edited version.

so they can have kind of that full perspective.

And then at the same time, on our on our website, we have the unedited, footage as well.

And it's important to understand that the videos that are in that edited, maybe 2 or 3 videos, there may be five or 6 or 7 officers on scene.

And so all of that information will be put on our website so they can see all of those as well.

And then, we wait until the investigation progresses.

I think the, suspect prosecution has been pretty clear that releasing the video, too early could impact the criminal prosecution.

if you call that a pretty significant press conference about that topic.

And so we take that into consideration as well.

And what we don't want to do is get in a position where we release video footage, and then there's a prosecution of either an officer or a member of the public that fired their weapons.

Remember those three officer involved shootings where, the individual who we shot had been charged with crimes.

And so we don't want to impact either of those criminal investigations.

And because that that really is going to hurt trust with the public.

So we have to take that into consideration.

And then we are going to release the body worn camera footage.

The goal is 45 days, but the public also has to be reminded that the decision on what the officer's special prosecution is going to do about prosecuting the case, or declining the case has to be, part of that conversation.

As you know, people have cameras on their homes, on their phones.

So often incidences are recorded by members of the public, and sometimes it's live streamed to social media or it's posted very, very soon afterwards.

How does that complicate the work that you're doing?

And do you think that at some point you may have to adjust when official footage is released in order to counter, false narrative that may be starting in the public?

That that's a pretty significant complicating factor.

you know, I would love to release a video on that 7 to 10 day time frame because then the narrative can at least be shaped by as much information as we can possibly put out.

But we have that limiting factor.

And when, the public releases, you know, ring camera or some camera that's on their home and that gets out there.

Yeah.

Typically it's a portion of the video.

It doesn't have the call for service.

It doesn't have any of that background information.

And so now the public has, you know, they see a press conference where we give them some information.

They see a video that that is edited that doesn't have the full picture.

And so now it creates that anxiety and it creates distress and it creates questions about law enforcement.

And then we all have to wait to include the officers to have that information put out.

It just creates a lot of stress.

Rich, your thoughts about that, the timeline about how and when video gets released and, and then we'll I want to follow up with your ideas about some citizen oversight that you've advocated for.

Well, I mean, it is complicated.

And that's what I think civilian oversight is being part of the process will add to the community trust in the process.

And I don't think it's looking backwards.

I think it's being part of the process right now.

And so, I think that's a big advantage of civilian oversight that could assist in the police department in making these decisions and the community knowing why these decisions are made and, and, and that they're being worked on.

So that's I guess that's another reason for civilian oversight.

And, you know, it's interesting that civilian oversight, I my research has shown that it's in Spokane, it's in Seattle, it's and Portland, it's in Boise.

It's on our kind of neighbor hood, cities.

And they all have civilian oversight.

We haven't.

But I think it's now time that to explore that.

You have put forward an idea.

Both of you were on Talk of Alaska earlier this week and which you talked about, a model where cases would go to a grand jury.

Talk about that.

Well, I've been doing a lot of research.

I have a colleague that was I worked with in Columbus, Ohio, that's now on the Columbus, Civilian Review Board.

And so I got a lot of inside and, about how they work.

And one thing I discovered, there is every police involved.

Shooting in Columbus, Ohio, automatically is referred to referred to a grand jury.

And I think that would really be of value to the community because right now these decisions are always the same.

You know, that we've gotten from the, the, public, the AG's office and, special prosecutions.

But if the community were involved in those decisions and it's a tough decision to take the law and apply it to the facts, and make a decision whether, a shooting was justified.

But if the community were part of that process through the grand jury process, that would really add to the the trust in those decisions being made.

What are your thoughts about that chief case?

And that's challenging environment, to be a law enforcement officer and to be trained, in one of this, one of the areas expertise is when to use force and how to use force.

And knowing that if you're ever put in a position where you have to use deadly force and of course, your duty that you're automatically going to go to grand jury, that's not the process we use for the average citizen.

We've seen a lot of cases throughout the country where, the officers are being taken to grand jury and they're being indicted, but then, there's no prosecution or they're being acquitted.

And so now you're having officers go through that whole process in something that right now we rely on the expertise of the officers, special prosecution.

And I think what's what's what's really important is when we look at whether it's civilian oversight or we look at training, I don't look at what the standard is currently, you know, like training standards.

For example, do we meet the state requirements?

We exceed the state requirements.

And being a very agile police department and being very responsive to the community is what I believe is going above and beyond.

And so when I talk about looking at training and I talk about looking at and being responsive or open with the community, I want to be able to have immediate response to the community.

I want to be able to make decisions and run the organization so that we can provide the information.

We can change training to immediately address the needs so we can improve our performance, and that's the quickest way to do it.

We've just have a short amount of time left here.

Chief case mayor Suzanne LaFrance wants changes.

Have you discussed what those might be and how much input will you have in that?

Oh, absolutely.

I think a lot of the changes are going to start in, the June or excuse me, the December academies will be starting Academy in December.

we're currently working on the curriculum right now.

And, the curriculum that we're adding is, again, it's outside of what's typically taught in law enforcement.

So think about subjects like emotional intelligence and how that plays into the successful use of de-escalation tactics and techniques.

So it's going outside of the normal training classes that you see in police academies and adding that to the base.

So day one, day two, week two of the academy.

So that can be the foundation of the curriculum.

All right.

And in about 20 seconds Rich, what do you want to see happen next?

I like to see and we've been talking to the National, Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, not a national.

And, they advise and creating a civilian review board that, first of all, you have community organizations that are in it, and they're going to be in it for a while, and that they work with the all the other parts of it together to form the kind of civilian oversight that would work for this city.

So that's what we'd like to start.

Thank you both so much for your time this evening.

Those of us who are not trained in law enforcement can't know the difficulties that can arise in an emergency setting when life and death decisions must be made in seconds.

But we do know that trust between the public and officers assigned to protect them is critical for maintaining a safe, engaged, and thriving community.

Without trust, the system can break down quickly.

And as we know, a simple call intended to calm and agitated person can end in tragedy.

No one wants that outcome, and working together in an open, transparent way will help rebuild trust so Alaskans can feel confident in their local officers ability to keep the peace.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight, visit our website Alaskapublic.org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our free daily digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.