Anchorage police say Alaska’s largest city saw nearly three dozen homicides last year, coming close to its modern record set seven years earlier.
Thirty-four people were killed in Anchorage during 2024, according to an Anchorage Police Department spreadsheet released this month. That toll includes a death after an Aug. 1 assault in Midtown, which police said last week is now being investigated as a homicide.
The total marks a sharp rise from the 23 homicides police reported in 2023. But it remains below the 38 homicides police spokesman Christopher Barraza said were reported in 2017, the highest in the city’s recent history.
Sgt. Jade Baker, head of APD’s Homicide Unit, couldn’t cite any single cause for the city’s increase in homicides from 2023. The cases were evenly spread out across the city, he said Monday, as they also have been in previous years.
According to Baker, homicide cases are often linked with other major offenses such as drug crimes and sexual assaults.
“One could say that if most other crimes are on the rise, (then) you're also going to see that with person crimes like homicides and serious assaults and such,” Baker said.
The recent rise in local homicides has strained the unit’s six detectives, according to Baker. The detectives balance the new cases with their work on earlier homicides and taking personal time for their families.
“Before this, I think our average year was maybe 24 to 26 homicide cases,” Baker said. “And this unit investigates not only homicides but kidnappings, missing persons, other shooting, juvenile deaths, cases like that. So we have a lot of cases coming in, very emergent, acute cases that our detectives have to come in and investigate.”
Several factors complicate investigating homicides, Baker said, ranging from evaluating claims of self-defense to persuading witnesses to come forward. And an ever-expanding array of digital evidence has made cases even more complex.
"It has to be processed not only for its inculpatory value, but also its exculpatory value," Baker said. "Because we don't want to – if there's something that clears a potential suspect with us, it's just as important to us as evidence against somebody. So we have to go through all of that."
Some of the city’s deaths last year aren’t considered homicides, for various reasons.
Baker said police were awaiting further information from the state medical examiner’s office on the Nov. 1 case of an infant found dead downtown on Cordova Street. Police still haven’t contacted the child’s mother, and the case remains a death investigation rather than a homicide.
Lt. Denielle Hrovat, who oversees the department’s Violent Crimes Unit, said police do not count people killed in officer-involved shootings – including the five fatalities during 2024’s eight such shootings – as part of the city’s homicides. Were they to be included in the count, the year’s total would rise to a record-breaking 39 deaths.
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Baker said police considered 21 – or just over 60% – of last year’s 34 cases to be closed, indicating that prosecutors had made a charging decision regarding a suspect in them. Eight cases, all of them closed, allegedly involve domestic violence.
Hrovat noted that the department’s clearance rate for last year’s cases may rise as investigations continue and new evidence comes to light.
“When we're reporting, we're reporting on what cases aren't solved at that time,” she said. “That doesn't mean that they won't be solved in a year – they could be solved in two months. So clearance rates can also change, just as our homicide numbers can change throughout the years.”
Despite the department’s limited resources, Baker said investigators remain committed to solving each killing that comes their way.
“We'll keep on it for sure, do our best, because every one of these cases is very important to us,” Baker said.
