State prosecutors say they will not charge two Anchorage police officers who shot and wounded a man in July, after he allegedly fired a shotgun at a driver as well as both officers.
The Office of Special Prosecutions released its decision Tuesday, clearing K-9 Officers Brandon Stack and Jacob Jones in the July 8 shooting of 52-year-old Damien Dollison along a Bragaw Street business corridor. The announcement came as Dollison was indicted by a grand jury on three counts of third-degree assault, as well as two counts of third-degree weapons misconduct.
Dollison is one of eight people shot by Anchorage police so far this year. Five of them were killed and Dollison is among the three who were injured.
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A 20-page letter discussing the shooting in detail, written by Chief Assistant Attorney General Jenna Gruenstein, closely matches the initial account by police. It also offers new detail about the encounter that police say left Dollison critically injured, with nobody else hurt.
According to Gruenstein, the incident began shortly before 3:30 a.m. on July 8 at the Circle K convenience store on Bragaw, at its intersection with DeBarr Road. A driver told police he was sitting behind the wheel of a pickup truck with a woman in the passenger seat, when a man later identified as Dollison approached him, pointed a shotgun at him through the open driver’s-side window and ordered him to get out.
As he was doing so, the driver said, Dollison claimed the man had referred to him using “a racially charged term” – an accusation he found “really weird.”
“(The driver) said he had never seen or talked to Mr. Dollison before and had not said anything to him,” Gruenstein said.
When the driver got out, he told police he grabbed a handgun in his truck and drew it on Dollison. He said Dollison ran around the southwest corner of the store, then fired the shotgun at him when he followed Dollison around the corner. When the driver tried to return fire, the safety on his handgun was still on.
The driver said Dollison then entered the Circle K and pointed the gun at him through a store window. Police received a 3:27 a.m. call from a store employee reporting the gunfire and Dollison’s presence inside. Multiple officers including Stack and Jones rapidly responded to the call, with Dollison shot and wounded just three minutes later.
Jones told detectives that when he arrived in his police SUV, pedestrians were pointing to Dollison – wearing a camouflage jacket and carrying a long gun – as he walked south from the Circle K, passing a church and several small businesses in the area.
Jones said that Dollison initially pointed the shotgun at him, causing him to get out and take cover behind the SUV’s door. Dollison then ran south and Jones got back into the vehicle and followed him into the parking lot of a nearby restaurant. Dollison shot at Jones’ vehicle.
“Officer Jones said he saw the muzzle flash and heard an ‘extremely loud boom,’” Gruenstein said.
Jones initially thought he had been shot, but found he was unhurt.
Stack, who was in another police SUV, told detectives he had driven farther south beyond Dollison to cut off his escape. When Dollison emerged from an alleyway in the area, he said, Dollison fired the shotgun at him as well.
At that point, Stack said, he opened fire on Dollison.
“Officer Stack said he fired about twelve times through his windshield at Mr. Dollison; he said he stopped shooting when he lost sight of him,” Gruenstein said.
At the same time, Jones told detectives he had gotten out of his SUV when he heard Stack’s gunfire.
Stack said he also got out of his own SUV and saw Dollison take a defensive position behind a dumpster.
“Officer Stack believed Mr. Dollison was going to shoot and kill Officer Jones and he believed the officers needed to stop him as soon as they could,” Gruenstein said. “Officer Stack said (Dollison) was a threat to everyone in the vicinity and he made the decision to shoot at (him) again.”
Jones said he saw Dollison turn and point the shotgun at him from behind the dumpster.
At that point, Jones said he fired three or four rounds at Dollison as Stack said he fired two more shots at him. Stack said Dollison went down after his second shot.
Officers detained Dollison and provided first aid, before medics took him to a hospital. Doctors found that Dollison had been struck twice, with one round grazing his right arm and another shattering his right femur.
Jones and Stack’s body-worn cameras, as well as their SUVs’ dashboard cameras, all recorded video during the shooting. The shots seen and heard in the footage roughly matched the officers’ counts of shots fired during the encounter.
Investigators recovered a total of 15 9mm shell casings from Stack’s vehicle and a spot near it, as well as three more casings from near Jones’ vehicle. They also found two spent 12-gauge shotgun shells, corresponding with the spots from which Dollison reportedly fired on the officers’ SUVs.
Gruenstein determined that the officers were justified in shooting Dollison, under state law that allows officers to use deadly force in response to deadly force employed against themselves or others.
“Based on the totality of the circumstances, the officers were reasonable in their belief that Mr. Dollison presented a danger to the public after having committed multiple felonies against a person, and that he would endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless he was arrested without delay,” Gruenstein said.
Dollison’s shooting is this year’s sixth by Anchorage police to be reviewed by state prosecutors, under an accelerated schedule in recent months. Earlier this week, prosecutors found that officers’ shooting of 16-year-old Easter Leafa when she approached them with a knife was also justified.
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The state started investigating police shootings in 2009, and has records from 2010 on. Since then, the state has never filed criminal charges against an officer in a shooting during a police response.
Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him at cklint@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Chris here.
