Alaska News

Attack at Anchorage park nearly triggers riot, yet goes unreported

KSKA reports that a gathering at a Mountain View park started looking enough like a developing riot that all on-duty Anchorage police officers were dispatched to the scene. Yet the July 28 attack that triggered the Lyons Park menace went unmentioned by media outlets and did not end up in any official police reports.

Anchorage Police Officer Derek Hsieh relayed the incident to KSKA. He was dispatched to the park around 8 p.m., to find officers already on the scene, and several people in custody.

Cory Naea and Jordan Molia, who have since been charged with a "fairly serious assault," were being arrested when the crowd began to swell. Between 25 and 50 spectators converged at the park.

Anchorage Police Officer Mark Mew told KSKA, "They weren't dispersing and they were getting louder and the situation was escalating and becoming dangerous." So he called every officer on duty, between 25-30 police, to the scene.

The officers didn't need to use any tools to disperse the crowd. But Mew said that the event demonstrated a turn for the worse, and it worries him.

Lucy Hansen of the Polynesian Association of Alaska worries too. She told KSKA that her community usually handles problems through elder intervention, and that a measure of distrust for police has arisen since the fatal shooting of Shane Tasi in June.

The Anchorage Equal Rights Commission and Anchorage Community Police Relations Task Force are sponsoring a forum with a representative from the Department of Justice on September 13.

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Naea and Molia face charges of assault in the second degree, a class-B felony.

Read much more from KSKA, here.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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