After a fatal shooting at a downtown bar, Anchorage police say they’re adding more officers to the area, which has long been a crime hotspot.
The shooting happened outside Gaslight Lounge early Sunday. Anchorage police say 23-year-old Leroy Manogiamanu opened fire, wounding two security guards and a bar customer. A guard then shot him and he died at the scene.
Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said in the 25 years he’s policed downtown, there’s been a pattern of “problem” bars opening and closing, and criminal activity gravitating back to the Gaslight.
“A different bar opens up, where kind of some of the same type of violence, shots fired, shootings, those types of things,” Case said. “They'll drift to that bar, and then that bar eventually, you know, gets closed down because they can't keep control of the crowd, and they end up going back to the Gaslight. So it kind of goes back and forth.”
A recent police review of the Gaslight found 337 calls for service in a 20-month period. The next closest bar had 50.
On Wednesday, Case announced that the number of officers patrolling the area near Gaslight will double in size from four to eight during bars’ closing time. Additionally, Case said, the Fourth Avenue block the bar sits on will be closed off from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights to allow people leaving the bars to walk to their rides more safely.
“By not allowing cars to travel in front and also to start directing folks as soon as they get out of the bar to kind of head towards where their ride is, we should cut down on some of the conflict that we should see both in the front and the rear of the bar,” Case said.
Case said the changes were in the works before last weekend’s shooting. The Gaslight sits across from another prominent Anchorage building: the police department headquarters. When asked how the rowdiest bar in Anchorage can exist across the street from his office, Case said the presence of police and other monitoring equipment doesn’t always deter certain crimes.
“Some of the measures that we try to put in place throughout the city, there's people that are just going to engage in that activity, even though they know they're being monitored,” Case said. “And so it's really, how do we discourage that crowd from coming to this particular location, preferably not going to another location.”
Case said he doesn’t know how long the additional staffing in front of the Gaslight will last, but says he aims to continue working with the bar’s owners to better address crimes in the area.
Police spokesman Chris Barazza said police are in the final phase of their investigation into Sunday’s shooting. He said no charges against the guard who shot and killed Manogiamanu are currently being considered because state law on homicides includes an exception for defense of human life.
Alaska Public Media's Chris Klint contributed to this report.
