State officials say they’re working to improve the speed of their investigations into police shootings — as public pressure mounts for the release of body camera footage of the incidents.
So far this year, officers have shot nine people during responses, killing six of them. Five of those shootings involved Anchorage police.
At a meeting with reporters Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore said the release of body camera footage should come after an investigation by the state Office of Special Prosecutions, in order to follow due process. But he acknowledged that those state investigations are taking a long time.
“I’ll be the first one to tell you that I think that our process of reviewing these cases has had some problems,” Skidmore said. “There are cases that we’ve reviewed that it has taken us in the Department of Law far too long to review.”
Right now, the state is still reviewing eight police shootings, including one from November of last year, to determine if use of force was justified. In some cases, Skidmore said, they’re waiting on ballistic and police reports, as well as autopsies.
To help with the delays, Skidmore said the Office of Special Prosecutions has more than doubled its number of prosecutors from three to seven. It’s also working with law enforcement agencies to get reports from them faster.
“I would always seek to talk with them first and to encourage them to come up with processes to help them get information to us faster,” Skidmore said. “I think that will work. I’m very optimistic about that. But if it didn’t work, are there other things that can be done? Yes, there are.”
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Skidmore said the state has investigated police shootings since 2009, and has records from 2010 on. Since then there have been 148 police shootings in the state, and Skidmore said zero of them have led to an officer being charged with a crime. That includes two of the shootings this year that left two men wounded: 22-year-old Kaleb Bourdukofsky in Anchorage and 25-year-old Victor Jack in Wasilla.
“We have found officers are not discharging their firearms unless it was authorized by statute,” Skidmore said. “Now, that statute, that’s a pretty broad authorization when they’re allowed to do that. I’m not making any bones about that; that is a broad authorization. But those are the laws in the state of Alaska. And we haven’t found anyone to violate them yet.”
Under state statute, deadly use of force is authorized for officers when they reasonably suspect a person has committed a felony use of force against someone, is attempting to escape while armed with a firearm, or might “otherwise endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay.”
Skidmore said while he understands frustrated community members’ calls for transparency, that must be balanced with protecting people’s individual due process rights.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
