Off-duty Anchorage police officer accused of driving patrol vehicle while intoxicated

An Anchorage police officer accused of driving while intoxicated last month now faces criminal charges, officials from the police department said Wednesday. The officer was off-duty and was driving a patrol vehicle at the time of the incident, according to the police department.

Ethan Copeland, 24, is still employed by the department, police spokeswoman Renee Oistad said Wednesday. She did not answer a question asking if he was placed on leave after the Dec. 9 incident.

Oistad said Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Security Forces received a driving complaint about him around 7 p.m. Copeland was in his patrol car, which was “soft-marked,” meaning it was equipped with emergency lights and sirens as well as a government license plate, but didn’t have an obvious police graphic on it, she said.

Copeland was invited to a holiday event on base and arrived intoxicated, according to Capt. Alexandra Smith, chief of media operations for the base. The JBER security officers did not conduct field sobriety tests, but Smith said Copeland was “visibly intoxicated” when they contacted him after he arrived at his destination.

Base security detained Copeland until officers from APD’s traffic unit arrived, she said. The officers transported Copeland off the base and took over the investigation, Smith said.

Investigators charged Copeland with operating under the influence and possession of a firearm while drunk, Oistad said. She did not answer a question about whether the involved firearm was property of the police department.

Copeland was not jailed that night, but released with a requirement to appear in court for an arraignment, Oistad said. His arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 29.

The APD Internal Affairs unit is investigating what policy violations occurred and the state Office of Special Prosecutions is investigating the criminal case, Oistad said.

Copeland graduated from the police academy in 2021, according to a department social media post.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Copeland declined to comment on the incident.

The police department did not notify the public that Copeland was criminally charged. The department has released statements previously when an officer is charged with a crime, including in October, when a former officer was charged with sexual assault. Copeland’s criminal charges were first reported by Alaska’s News Source on Wednesday.

“This incident involves off-duty conduct,” Oistad said in an emailed statement. “APD is currently writing policy that will dictate how this type of situation is handled to include the public notification aspect. Until that policy is finalized, we have no further comment.”

Daily News reporter Zachariah Hughes contributed to this story.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported, based on information from JBER, that Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Security Forces transported Copeland to an Anchorage Police Department facility. A JBER spokeswoman on Thursday corrected a previous statement to say that security forces detained Copeland but it was Anchorage police officers who transported him off the base.