Prosecutors clear Anchorage officers who shot and wounded murder suspect

Two Anchorage Police Department officers were legally justified when they shot and wounded a murder suspect near a downtown bar last month, state prosecutors said in their first finding on this summer’s series of shootings by police in Alaska’s largest city.

Alaska Department of Law officials released a letter this week clearing Officers Parker Boydston and Jordan Varak’s actions in the June 1 shooting of 22-year-old Kaleb Bourdukofsky. Police say Bourdukofsky shot and killed 25-year-old Diego Joe behind the Pioneer Bar, moments before police spotted him running through a nearby parking lot.

The decision comes at a point when police are under close public scrutiny, as Anchorage officers have shot five people – three of them fatally – since mid-May. The city also has new political and police leadership, with Mayor Suzanne LaFrance and her new APD chief, Sean Case, assuming office on July 1.

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The July 9 letter to Case from the Office of Special Prosecutions includes new details about the events that led police to shoot Bourdukofsky. In the letter, Assistant Attorney General Dan Shorey says Boydston and Varak arrived in the area for a bar-break detail shortly before 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Several officers heard “rapid gunfire” near the Pioneer, with Boydston and Varak moving into the parking lot behind the West 4th Avenue bar. Varak was armed with a .223-caliber AR-15 rifle, while Boydston had a 9mm pistol.

As the officers advanced, Shorey said, they were not yet aware that Joe had been killed – but people in the area told them Bourdokofsky had fired the shots. Varak saw Bourdokofsky run along a West 3rd Avenue sidewalk, drop a pistol fitted with an extended magazine, then stop to pick it up.

“Bourdukofsky continued running east on the sidewalk with Officer Varak and Officer Boydston in pursuit,” Shorey said in the letter. “Both officers commanded Bourdukofsky to drop the firearm. Bourdukofsky did not obey the officers’ commands; he kept running with the pistol in his right hand.”

The officers shot Bourdokofsky as he approached G Street, where he fell and dropped the pistol. Shorey said officers provided first aid until medics took him to Providence Alaska Medical Center for treatment.

Surveillance video from businesses in the area recorded the shooting. One clip contained audio of Boydston and Varak ordering Bourdokofsky to drop his gun three separate times before they opened fire.

Both Boydston and Varak were wearing police body cameras, Shorey said. Boydston’s camera recorded both their chase and their gunfire, 35 seconds after 2:27 a.m.

“Bourdukofsky is still running and has not complied with either Officer Boydston or Officer Varak’s repeated commands to drop the pistol,” Shorey said. “Officer Boydston and Officer Varak cease firing at 2:27:38 a.m. and pause at the northwest corner of 308 G Street as Bourdukofsky lays prone on the sidewalk with the pistol to his left side.”

Based on surveillance video of the initial shooting, Shorey said just 66 seconds had elapsed from when Bourdokofsky allegedly killed Joe to the officers opening fire.

Investigators recovered three shell casings matching Boydston’s pistol and six matching Varak’s rifle. Medics counted six gunshot wounds on Bourdukofsky, who survived after treatment at Providence.

In separate interviews with APD detectives, Boydston and Varak said that they shot Bourdukofsky based on both their own vulnerability at the time and the threat he posed to others in the area.

“Officer Boydston said that (Bourdukofsky) was running to the corner of West 3rd Avenue and G Street, where he would have cover from the corner of the building and would also be closer to civilians,” Shorey said. “He said that neither Officer Varak nor Officer Boydston had cover where they were positioned.”

Varak said he was carrying less-lethal weapons including pepper spray and a Taser, but Bourdukofsky was too far away and moving too fast to use them.

“Officer Varak stated that (Bourdukofsky) had shot multiple volleys in a heavily populated area, was running towards G Street where Ubers and taxis often wait for riders, had re-armed himself after dropping the pistol, and never verbally responded to any of the officers’ commands,” Shorey said.

Shorey said that under state law, an officer “may use deadly force against a person who may otherwise endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay.”

“If the officer reasonably believed that his use of deadly force was necessary to prevent serious physical injury or death to either himself or another person, he was legally justified in using deadly force,” Shorey said.

As a result, Shorey said, Boydston and Varak acted in lawful defense of themselves and others when they shot Bourdokofsky. He declined to file charges against them, calling such a move “not legally supportable.”

Shorey’s letter was released after a Wednesday presentation by Attorney General Treg Taylor on the state’s efforts to speed up its reviews of police shootings across Alaska. Although Anchorage police recently proposed releasing body camera footage 45 days after major incidents, state officials said footage should not be made public until shooting investigations have been completed.

Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore said that since 2010 prosecutors have reviewed 148 police shootings statewide but have never filed criminal charges in one. He called the state’s use-of-force statute a “broad authorization” for officers to do so.

Taylor told reporters that any changes to the current review system must originate with lawmakers.

“If there’s people that feel like that process needs to be fixed, then the way to do that is through the Legislature, through changing the (Alaska court system’s) Rules of Professional Conduct,” Taylor said. “But as of right now, our duty and our chief concern is to follow that law, as it’s laid out by the Legislature currently and by the courts.”

The Department of Law also released two other letters this week reviewing shootings by Alaska State Troopers. Those include the October killing of 21-year-old Timothy Thomas after troopers say he tried to enter a Tok motel room carrying a rifle, as well as the February wounding of 25-year-old Victor Jack after he allegedly charged a trooper with a knife outside a Wasilla home.

The officers in those shootings, Troopers Timothy Rosario and Toma Caldarea respectively, were both legally cleared by prosecutors.