Anchorage city officials have proposed a series of code changes aimed at better addressing certain unwanted behavior, like public intoxication and indecent exposure.
Municipal attorney Eva Gardner said Anchorage police regularly get calls about that type of behavior, but it hasn’t been clearly prohibited under city law.
“This conduct has been happening,” Gardner said at an Anchorage Assembly Rules Committee meeting in early January. “There’s no response we can make. There’s no opportunity for law enforcement to engage.”
Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said that lack of enforcement has created frustration among officers and the public for years, even back when he was a patrol officer.
“Multiple times a day, I would get calls that were like this,” Case said. “Where there was no report to take, there was no arrest to make, there was no citation to issue, and it was this type of disorderly conduct behavior.”
Under an ordinance introduced by the Assembly on Tuesday, public indecency – like unwanted sexual exposure – as well as threatening behavior, physical harassment and public intoxication would be considered low-level misdemeanors that could result in jail time.
The ordinance was sponsored by Mayor Suzanne LaFrance and Assembly members Zac Johnson and Kameron Perez-Verdia.
The goal of the ordinance is to be preventative, rather than punitive, Case said. The ordinance requires officers to offer transportation to people who are intoxicated in public before arresting them, he said.
Overall, Case said he’s hopeful that the risk of jail time will cut down on both disorderly conduct and police work.
“Settling it, having people go their separate ways, or settling it by getting someone into treatment or into services, those are easier paths in terms of just work than making the arrest,” Case said.
Case acknowledged that, statistically, the code changes are more likely to impact the city’s unhoused residents.. But he said he hopes the changes will result in connecting people who might have underlying trauma or mental health issues to resources they need.
“In my perspective, this isn’t an attack on homelessness,” Case said. “This isn't over-policing homelessness. This is one more way that we can use tools to try to help these folks.”
The Anchorage Assembly is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposed ordinance and potentially vote on it Jan. 27.
