Police detained a man as part of a drug investigation Thursday after a standoff in downtown Juneau that lasted nearly three hours and closed four city blocks.
Juneau Police spokesperson and interim police chief Krag Campbell said the man had not been arrested or charged.
“The investigation is still ongoing. We need to determine what criminal charges are appropriate,” he said during an interview at the scene.
The standoff began after officers with the Southeast Alaska Cities Against Drugs task force arrived to execute a search warrant at a home on North Franklin Street a little after 10 a.m. Thursday. More than a dozen officers wearing tactical gear stood behind JPD’s armored truck and surrounded the residence on Fifth Street. Multiple people stood nearby to watch the scene.
Campbell said a judge granted police a warrant to search the home and its occupants a few days before officers arrived at the scene. He said that two people exited the home early on in the search and have not been arrested or charged.
For most of the standoff, police spoke over a loudspeaker and fired several of what they described as less-than-lethal rounds into the house, breaking windows. They repeatedly asked the person to exit the building with their hands up. Later, officers threw pepper spray into the home, which billowed from the door and windows.
After using a ladder to look through the top window of the house, officers entered its front door at around 1:30 p.m. They soon walked the man out and put him in handcuffs. Campbell said the man did not physically resist.
“There was no violence on his part or anything like that,” he said.
Campbell said the search follows a more than year-long investigation into the distribution of illegal drugs and that police have seen “a huge increase in fentanyl coming to Juneau” over the last three years.
“So part of this investigation is because we believe that this person who’s the subject of the residence is associated with some of those actions,” he said.
Campbell said police were reopening the roads, and the department planned to share more information with an information release to the public on Thursday evening.
