Alaskans who lived in the state during the Gov. Bill Walker Administration recall how bad crime got during that era under Walker’s Senate Bill 91, which allowed criminals to get bounced from jail with no penalties time and again. The justice system was a revolving door and Alaska became known as a lawless place, until Gov. Mike Dunleavy in 2019 signed the law repealing the crime-spree legislation.
Anchorage has a catch-and-release problem just like SB 91. It’s called Rule 45.
Mayor Suzanne LaFrance has built a budget blueprint for cities showing how to have that revolving door of criminals without state legislators repealing it. All cities must do is to stop prosecuting crime and let the clock run out.
The municipal prosecutor’s office at the Anchorage Mayor’s Office is overwhelmed with cases. The office, which deals with all the misdemeanor cases in the city, as well as assaults, domestic violence, thefts, disorderly conduct and more, can’t keep up.
In addition to the local cases brought through arrests, there are State of Alaska cases that start out as felonies, but are reduced to misdemeanors and end up in the municipal prosecutor’s inbox.
With 13,000 cases per year, Anchorage currently doesn’t have enough prosecutors to handle the workload in what is quickly becoming a lawless city.
The backlog has led to about 60 cases a week being automatically dismissed by the court, simply because the cases run out of time set by the Supreme Court.
The law known as Rule 45 relates to getting a speedy trial, which is defined as a trial within 120 days.
Since thousands of cases are not brought to trial within that time in Anchorage, that 240 cases a month adds up to about 2,880 potential criminal convictions a year that are dismissed due to Rule 45.
Read how Rule 45 works at this link.
In addition, Anchorage leadership now has a “restorative justice” mindset, as defined by portions of the mayor’s first budget document.
In Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s budget, she lays out more money for parks and trails, and funds for diversity and equity offices, but no more hiring of criminal prosecutors.
That means the management of criminal cases is, by design, working as Senate Bill 91 intended all along.
Criminal defense attorneys in Anchorage now look like rock stars because their clients are getting off scot free, as long as they don’t violate their conditions of probation while they await trial. They just have to keep their noses clean for 120 days, and they will not have to face justice.
It’s now clear that Mayor Suzanne LaFrance is cognizant of how this works. She has already let experienced prosecutors go, and the prosecutor’s office has hired seven new very green prosecutors, but the office needs as many as 30 prosecutors to handle the workload. She has budgeted for no more criminal prosecutors.
In her budget, LaFrance adds more money to administration in the Municipal Attorney’s Office and takes 4.68% of the funds away from the criminal prosecutors.
She has added no positions to the criminal division, while boosting the civil division budget by 7%. The civil division deals with impounded vehicles, and provides “legal counsel, support, and advice on specific legislation, the Municipal Code, Charter, legislative procedures, the responsibilities and authority of the Municipality; represent the Municipality and its officials and employees in civil litigation.” This civil division handles DEI complaints and other civil lawsuits.
The mayor has already thrown in the towel on dealing with the criminal class that is now running the homeless encampments, and the dismissal of charges may ultimately lead to low morale in the police force; why bother arresting people for theft if they’re just going to skirt Rule 45 due to a planned lack of prosecution by the LaFrance Administration?
Notably, the mayor has also proposed no increases in police office personnel in Anchorage, now a force of 614 full-time positions, or about one officer for every 471 residents, roughly the national average.
Businesses in the downtown neighborhood in Anchorage are reporting a sharp increase in burglaries and daytime thefts and some business owners are discussing hired armed security for their establishments or sleeping in their businesses at night.
La France is a zealot. Her faith teaches trading success for failure yields Nirvana. Human sacrifice is her stock and trade.
In the name of logic; If punishment of criminals were less lenient, then there would be less crime, less court appointments, less overload on prosecutors, less burden and victimization on the community.
A Democrat utopia!
Why did I know this would happen? We’ve not recovered from the Walker years. The vortex of Anchorage swirling down the toilet bowl continues to gain momentum.
Spot on!
This is exactly what the case still is in Bethel; the “justice system” here is a joke.
I am sure Lafrance and her cohorts will enjoy their 24 hour police protection we the serfs get to pay for while we have to beef up our own security systems and buy weapons and ammo to protect our own lives and property.
Wont be long and Anchorage will reach numbers of car theft reach the record setting highs we saw during the pantsless days of the Berkowitz’s clown show.
I remember Berkowitz when he was at the helm. 4,000 plus stolen cars in one year from primarily private sector workers.
Normal for leftists.
You undesirables get to live in tin shacks, and the “elites” (read that as parasites) get to enjoy every luxury in their walled and gated communities.
We need to supply them with a house in the mayor’s neighborhood.
Then the assembly can also have half way houses in their neighborhoods.
Lafrance must be Claman’s girlfriend. He’s so dumb he still brags about how he was the architect of SB91.
According to the American Constitutional philosophy, the sole purpose for which people form legitimate governments is to secure the rights of the governed (sovereign people).
All rights embedded in this philosophical framework ultimately boil down to rightful ownership: the right to self-ownership and the right to property.
One of the ways in which such rights are typically violated are by the depredations of common criminals. Those who commit murder, assault, kidnapping, rape, and/or extortion violate their victims’ self-ownership rights. And those who commit theft, burglary, robbery, trespass, vandalism, or fraud violate their victims’ property rights.
According to the American Constitutional philosophy, the sole job of government is to protect the governed from such rights violators (the “establish Justice” part from the Preamble)
The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution as a safeguard against the new government passing tyrannical, rights-violating laws. And the rights it enumerated can all be traced to the rights of self-ownership and property ownership implicit in its philosophy. The rights recognized by the First Amendment (freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition) are derived from our self-ownership rights: our ownership of our minds and bodily means of communication. And the right to be secure in one’s ownership of one’s guns, home, and “effects” as recognized by the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments are derived from our property rights.
If our government fails in its charge to secure the rights of the governed, then also embedded in our American Constitutional philosophy is the idea that the sovereign people should do for ourselves what our government has failed to do. Not only does that mean securing and protecting our own rights (as described above) but that also means replacing said government for one that will meet its American Constitutional purpose.
Protect yourselves and your families. Protect your property and that of your neighbors. Rid yourselves of your failing government, especially as it continues its slide into tyranny.
Sat on grand jury in early 2019. Had over a hundred cases and true bills on all of them. A couple were really bad ones (kidnaping and child abuse). Number of cases I tracked that went to trial. ZERO. This was in Palmer. One case we had within a few weeks the persons name was again in the news. Was killed. I was like “wait…that name sounds familiar from a case. Sure enough they were let go.
The Alaska court system is a total joke. I wasted 3 months of my time for nothing on grand jury. Never again. Its all a scam.
SB91 was a huge reason I left Anchorage. Anchorage has to close schools now. (The Mat-Su is building one.) If you want more schools closed, more people leaving, then stay in Anchorage and continue to either not vote, or vote for these losers.
You voted this in, Anchorage. Ever seen the movie Escape From New York?
You may be about to live it.
Government is never going to “save” you.
It’s no different anywhere else really.
Workout – lift weights, train a martial arts.
Eat right.
Practice with your firearm – train your wives and daughters, and have them carry everywhere you go.
Study and learn Alaska’s gun laws – open carry, concealed carry, Castle Doctrine, and Stand Your Ground laws.
Thugs, miscreants, scum, losers, addicts, vagrants, homeless – they don’t prey on the weak and prepared, generally.
They can tell by the way you walk, carry yourself, and the way you look at them.
Never be a victim – you really do control that premise to a large degree
You Anchorscurge residents get 3 1/2 more years of this crap because no one shows up to vote.
You people are going to get high.
Higher taxes
Higher crime
Higher high school dropouts
Higher homelessness
I don’t see much good coming out of this administration.
Anchorage used to be a great town.
Could victims of all these crimes file a class-action lawsuit to stop the lawlessness? Sometimes hitting the pocketbook results in change.
Frankly, it’s not so much the rules and the laws, it’s the attitude and the standards.
Assistant district attorneys are no longer “paying their dues” the way they used to. They are not expected to learn their profession by putting in the sixty to seventy hour workweeks they once did. There is little to no sense of commitment that there once was…an ADA putting in over 45 hours a week draws the ire of his colleagues.
Judges and magistrates get reviewed by how quickly they move their docket. So if a plea agreement is proffered and accepted that would once “shock the conscience of the court”, a judge has immense pressure to accept it… regardless.
A plea agreement leads to a conviction. Whether it’s a misdo conviction for original felony charges is irrelevant…it supports the District Attorney’s review the same as if the conviction were appropriate to the crimes charged or if a trial occurred.
I encourage all to use Court view. Alaska court records are public, and rightfully so. When you read of a serious felony arrest in the news or in AST Didpatches, look up the defendant by name and see how often they benefitted from plea agreements…it should shock and anger you.
Everyone in the system knows well that over 90% of criminal court traffic is generated by less than 10% of court “customers” yet no one is determined to just put recidivist offenders away for lengthy sentences.
If the common citizen of Anchorage was to take their motorhome and park it on the Park strip and start a fire and use the park strip as their personal bathroom and trash dump we would all be in jail. The homeless can do that to our park and nothing happens to them. so being a good model citizen works out to be a easy way to go to jail for breaking the law whereas if you’re homeless, you can break the law all the time and the cops don’t even come to you anymore .
19 yr old kid claims he fell asleep driving home from a night out, and takes out $7,000 worth of fence on two properties. Does not stop. Neighbor follows the kid home and the police are called. Dispatch says to call your insurance companies, they do’t respond to this. Police are called again and demand an officer. One shows up, confronts the suspect and finds, no insurance on vehicle. The fence owners are advised the suspect has been cited and the info on the case will be available on court view. That was in July. Nothing is posted, no one at the police department can find anything, prosecutors office leave you on hold for 45 min and clicks off. 19n yr old goes on with life, insurance companies inform you that your deductibles are higher than the damages. Finally someone answers the phone at the prosecutor’s office and says the court day has passed, he won’t give out the results and sorry, nothing they can do, or explain, or anything. Check court view for info. It never has been posted there.
Welcome to the new anchorage!!!!! And thank you La France.
Is this the damaged fence that is still seen along Chiniak Bay Drive??
In any case, I share your outrage at the municipality’s criminal prosecutor. The mayor, the assembly, and the muni prosecutors’ office are all monumentally derelict in bringing Anchorage’s criminals to account. Crime is the measure of a State’s failure, and this municipality is the local proof of it.
I also hear that one of the new lawyers in the legal
Department is same woman that successfully brought and won cases against the city. One from the fired EEO officer that should have never been paid and the other a disgruntled library person who was moved there after other problems in other departments! Absolutely no evidence anything happened.
When you vote for evil, you get evil.
Anchorage will equal LA, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, etc.
Unlike those cities and States, we Alaskans are armed trained, carry and if we feel in danger of our lives, will use any and all lawful force as needed.
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