Kyle Hopkins is special projects editor of the Anchorage Daily News. Through 2020, he is working with ProPublica on a project as part of the Local Reporting Network, and is a recipient of the Online News Association / Google News Initiative Journalism 360 Challenge. Contact him at khopkins@adn.com.
More than a third of Alaska communities have no local police of any kind. Criminals have been hired as cops in some remote villages. A federal emergency has been declared and millions of dollars are promised, but here’s what else experts recommend.
The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found small Alaska cities have employed police whose criminal records should have prevented them from being hired. Now, the state board is working to ensure they meet basic hiring standards.
Many remote Alaska villages have no law enforcement at all. But state troopers can be found in some wealthier, mainly non-Native suburbs, where growing communities have resisted paying for their own police departments.
A tiny Alaska village got a police officer. He’s never had to make an arrest. Meanwhile, larger communities with more crime have often been left behind as the state’s two-tiered policing crisis gets worse.
Days before his death in 2005, Simeon Askoak told officials how a key Alaska rural policing program was broken. His village hasn’t had another permanent cop since.
William Barr announced the funding in a video broadcast at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Fairbanks.
A judge has declared a crisis in the state’s courts, saying turnover among public defenders is delaying criminal trials and denying justice for victims and defendants alike.
To improve what it calls a public safety emergency, the DOJ detailed how it will spend $10.5 million. Alaska Native advocates want long-term reforms to increase their role in local justice systems as well.
Anna Sattler’s rape kit sat untested for almost 20 years as Alaska’s backlog got worse. Now, an ex-Iditarod musher faces charges, and she’s speaking publicly about the attack for the first time.
Carmen Perzechino Jr. was charged after investigators matched his DNA to evidence that sat untested for years.
Long before city officials said they had no choice but to hire criminals as cops, justice was elusive in the Norton Sound village of Stebbins and neighboring St. Michael.
The seven officers in Stebbins explain their criminal records and what it’s like to serve as a police officer there.
