Rather than Mayor Suzanne LaFrance doing the deed, it was Municipal Attorney Eva Gardner who was tasked with releasing the sanitized public version of the “critical incident review and recommendations” concerning an August police-involved shooting. The official version, paid for by taxpayers, is being kept secret by LaFrance’s office. The sanitized version is at the end of this report.
LaFrance’s muni attorney also on Thursday announced yet another request for proposals for a third party to do a second review of Anchorage Police Department policies, training, tactics, and supervision that pertain to use of force, de-escalation, and cultural awareness.
In other words, since the State’s Office of Special Prosecutions chose not to pursue charges against the officer involved in a shooting of a dangerous suspect in August of 2024, LaFrance is going ahead with her own double investigation of police tactics.
The RFP announcement came on Thursday, the day after a chaotic scene in the Government Hill neighborhood of Anchorage ended when an officer shot a man who was actively shooting at a victim. It was the second police-involved shooting in two days in Anchorage. Both the victim and the suspect survived and the officer was not harmed.
On Aug. 15, Mayor LaFrance called for a third party to investigate the police, indicating she does not trust the State Office of Special Prosecutions or the internal investigation into police-involved shootings, such as the one that led to the death of Easter Leafa on Aug. 13, 2024.
The Aug. 13 shooting occurred when the woman in Anchorage brandished a knife and threatened officers and her own family members. After that shooting, LaFrance immediately issued an apology to the family for the death of the woman, who had recently moved to Anchorage from Samoa.
LaFrance ordered not one but two layers of outside review to “understand” the factors that lead to officer-involved shootings and to recommend changes to the Anchorage Police Department’s policies and training to reduce officer-involved shootings.
The first layer of the LaFrance review was to have a third-party investigator direct the administrative investigation of the August 13 incident. The Municipal Attorney’s Office contracted with a licensed private investigative investigator, Christopher Darcy of Fairfax Consulting Group.
Darcy served 31 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, where he was Undersheriff, Assistant Sheriff, and Deputy Chief. That gave him experience with police internal affairs investigations. Darcy is retired from LVMPD and is serves as an independent monitor of the use of force for the City of Albuquerque, N.M. He also works as an expert witness in use of force litigation, working with both plaintiffs and defendants.
The administrative investigation of an officer-involved shooting begins once any criminal process has concluded. The State of Alaska Office of Special Prosecutions concluded its criminal investigation into the Aug. 13 incident and declined to bring charges against the involved officer on Sept. 30.
The LaFrance-Darcy began investigation immediately upon conclusion of the State of Alaska’s investigation. Darcy was provided full access to all information and internal resources necessary to complete his investigation thoroughly, impartially, and efficiently, in conjunction with APD Internal Affairs personnel. His investigation included the participation and perspective of the deceased individual’s family members, who were present at the location of the Aug. 13 incident.
At the conclusion of the investigation, Darcy presented his report to the Municipal Attorney. The report analyzed the Aug. 13 incident and recommended certain changes to APD policy and training.
Apparently, the full report will not be made public because of legal constraints, including personnel privacy rights, but the Municipal Attorney requested that Darcy prepare a separate public report containing his recommendations for training and policy changes.
The sanitized version for the public is the following, as provided by the Municipal Attorney:
Recommendation 1: Enhance policy to ensure (1) call takers and dispatchers receive regular training on information gathering
requirements and (2) call taking and dispatch are included in the scope of after-action or investigative review process on critical incidents.
Recommendation 2: Enhance APD’s supervision policy, making it more straightforward and comprehensive regarding sergeants’ and lieutenants’ expectations regarding critical incident response.
Recommendation 3: Enhance training to identify the specific actions that Sergeants and Lieutenants are expected to perform from the time of call assignment throughout the event’s conclusion. The policy should cover various topics, including de-escalation options, intervention, roles and responsibilities, and creating an array of force options.
Recommendation 4: Enhance command and control policy and training to include a protocol for responding to incidents involving the threatened use of violence by individuals in possession of a deadly weapon. The policy change is intended to ensure supervisors react to a potential critical incident in a timely manner and are proactive in managing the encounter. The policy improvements should consist of a process initiated by dispatch that ensures timely notification of a supervisor by requiring
supervisors to announce their acknowledgment and/or self-dispatch to the call. If a sergeant is unavailable, dispatch will contact another sergeant or lieutenant to respond if possible. Supervisors should manage the utilization of tactics, supervise the incident, and determine the use of a shotgun, rifle, arrest team, less lethal option, or other tools/resources such as the APD Crisis Intervention Team. The policy enhancement should include factors such as requiring verbal acknowledgment from supervisors assigned to high-risk calls, planning a response before arrival, assigning roles and responsibilities, coordinating the deployment of force options, deployment of less-lethal options, crisis intervention options, tactics for slowing the momentum, creating distance, and using cover, distance, and time as a tactic.
Recommendation 5: Enhance existing policy and training to include officers’ and supervisors’ responsibilities. This policy should consist of dispatch, patrol, supervision, and other units that may become involved. Every potential violent confrontation cannot always be de-escalated, but officers can impact many situations’ direction, severity, and outcome based on their decision-making and tactics.
Recommendation 6: Enhance existing policy and training regarding
appropriate force options, including an array of less lethal options, and the effective deployment by a team of officers. The training should clarify officer placement and effective communication in critical incidents.
Recommendation 7: Enhance Reality Based Training (RBT) to incorporate additional scenarios that reinforce the principles of contact officer and cover officer. Develop this concept in conjunction with a de-escalation response protocol.
Recommendations 8: Explore and implement meaningful ways to improve knowledge on effectively communicating with a diverse community. The policy should include specific steps to improve officers’ abilities to communicate without placing any additional threat of harm on officers and empower them, when feasible, to determine if limiting factors could influence communication with a suspect. Factors to be considered are language and cultural differences, medical impairments behavioral health issues, etc.
Recommendation 9: Enhance policy and update practices for interacting with families and witnesses after officer-involved shootings and enhance policy and officer training on best managing the investigation by improving trauma-informed communication with families of those involved in critical incidents.
Recommendation 10: Create a policy that defines when it is appropriate to use weapon-mounted lights to avoid a situation in which an officer inadvertently and unintentionally points a firearm at a human being. Weapon-mounted lights should not be used as a replacement for a flashlight.
Recommendation 11: Review supervisor notification systems and procedures relating to officer weapons qualifications requirements.
- Outside Review of APD Policies, Training, Tactics, and Supervision
The second layer of review by LaFrance is to be another comprehensive third-party review of APD’s policies, training, tactics and supervision as they relate to use of force, de-escalation, and cultural awareness so as to reduce the use of deadly force against violent criminals.
The request for proposals is posted on the Municipality’s Purchasing website and available through the Municipality’s BidExpress page. The deadline for proposals is Feb. 13.
Anchorage deserves her!
Nice detail; great reportage! 😉
Anchorage voters got what they deserve for apparently being too lazy or weak to actually take back their city…meanwhile the rest of the state has to put up with these criminals in office and their insidiously stupid or insidiously evil policies.
You suck Anchorage!
Arm chair quarterbacking by a feckless mayor and a DEI surrogate with ZERO idea of frontline policing. These idiots need to give the police back the ability to enforce ALL the laws on the books, instead of just the one’s that fit the personal opinions of these carpet bagging screwballs that are running our city.