Top law enforcement officials announce plan to fight violent crime in Alaska

Federal law enforcement agents in Alaska will now join police and troopers at the scene of killings and shootings in hopes of hastening prosecutions and reversing troubling trends in violent crime, the state's top law enforcement officials announced Wednesday.

Acting U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder said at a news conference Wednesday federal authorities are also working with state and local agencies to examine ballistics at shooting scenes and match up crimes with recovered firearms — part of a broader initiative to reverse an uptick in the state's already-high rate of violent crime.

"We think there's more to bring probably on any shooting or any murder, not just the ones that look like they might have a traditional federal connection," Schroder said.

Alaska had the highest per-capita rate of violent crime in 2016, FBI statistics show, Schroder said.

Amid a national uptick in violent crime, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked all U.S. attorneys to come up with plans for reversing the trends.

Even before that, Alaska had been working on such a plan, Schroder said. The statistics also showed an uptick in violent crime in 2016, though it was below the rate of violent crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he said.

Federal charges generally carry tougher penalties than state or local laws. The federal government is also more deep-pocketed than state or local law enforcement agencies, and can focus more on identifying and prosecuting violent offenders, Schroder said.

The acting U.S. attorney was joined Wednesday by a bevy of other federal, state and local law enforcement officials, including Alaska Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth and Anchorage Police Chief Justin Doll.

The three levels of government have worked in cooperation for years. But before now, federal agents have come into local violent crime investigations at a later time, said Doll, the Anchorage police chief. He said it isn't typical that a federal agent would respond to the scene of a violent crime shortly after it happened.

[Related: Anchorage police announce new strategy to deal with increases in crime]

Now a federal "duty agent" will be called out to every murder and shooting scene in the state, to aid local law enforcement and potentially explore federal charges, Schroder said.

"We've had a long cooperative relationship fighting crime," said Lindemuth, the attorney general. "The way I look at this is, we're supercharging it."

Federal agents also plan to work with Alaska State Troopers to focus on prosecuting people on violent felony charges or on domestic abuse involving firearms, Schroder said.

As an example of how federal agents have stepped recently into local cases, Schroder pointed to a case involving robberies at two coffee stands in South Anchorage in late September, where at least one suspect fired at police from an SUV.

One of the two defendants in that case, Shane Twigg, had seven prior felonies and also faced separate pending assault charges. The other defendant, Myles Gonangnan, had a prior felony for burglary and six other convictions from four separate cases in 2017 alone.

Federal authorities ended up charging Twigg and Gonangnan with interfering with state commerce, for creative reasons — the coffee beans weren't grown in Alaska. Twigg and Gonangnan face 32 years in federal prison if convicted of the charges.

It wasn't immediately clear how much jail time the two men would face under state law. In mid-2016, Alaska enacted criminal justice reform that reduced the penalty of jail time for the most common crimes. The reforms, known as Senate Bill 91 or SB 91, have been criticized by prosecutors as a weakening of tools for sending repeat or violent offenders to jail for long periods of time. The bill's defenders say there is little connection between incarceration rates and crime rates.

[Related: Coffee beans don't grow in Alaska. That's why the feds teamed with local prosecutors against robbery suspects.]

Lindemuth said the closer alliance with the federal government is not an effort to sidestep SB 91. She called SB 91 "irrelevant," saying SB 91 did not affect sentencing for the more serious, violent crimes being discussed Wednesday.

In the case of the coffee-stand robberies, however, Gonangnan and Twigg were both initially charged with armed robbery, a high-level felony. SB 91 reduced the sentencing range for higher-level felonies apart from homicide and sex offenses.

Schroder said he didn't comment on state law but also suggested there wasn't a relationship.

"We're in this in large part because federal crime is often stricter or tougher on violent crime, and gun crime," Schroder said. "That was true before SB 91."

The extensive criminal records of the two coffee-shop suspects warranted the tougher charges, he said. Federal prosecutors believe the two suspects should be off the street, he said.

At the same time, Schroder said the goal of the initiative is to generally prevent crime, not fill prisons.

He said authorities plan to hold face-to-face meetings with people finishing sentences for violent crimes. He said the plan would be to emphasize a "zero tolerance" policy to violence and drug trafficking by repeat offenders, and that help is available.

"There's a bit of a 'scared straight' function to that," Schroder said.

Some of the strategies have led to more aggressive prosecution, with a record number of federal charges filed in Alaska since August 2017, Schroder said. He pointed to charges filed against 68 people in 56 separate violent crime cases in the past two months, including the coffee-stand robberies.

That's about twice as many indictments and charges compared to a similar two-month period the year before, Schroder said.

"A lot of these shootings are done by a limited group of people," Schroder said at the news conference. "If we can identify, investigate and get them off the streets, it will be a big bang for the buck."