The Anchorage Police Department’s revised body camera policy went into effect Monday.
The policy says the chief of police still has discretion to keep recordings of certain incidents from becoming public, but the chief must publicly explain why in detail. Otherwise, the recordings, which may have redactions, should be published within 45 days. Incidents covered include uses of force that lead to serious injuries or deaths, police shootings generally and deaths in custody.
The policy also creates a way for families of people killed by police to privately see the recordings before they are published.
The Alaska Black Caucus and other organizations had pushed for a quicker turnaround for when videos are released. Rich Curtner, a retired federal public defender for Alaska who works on justice issues for the nonprofit, acknowledged it can be a complicated process.
“The important thing is that there are deadlines, and there are guidelines for when it’s released, and when it’s not released,” he said. “So those were the important issues that we were concerned about.”
The Alaska Black Caucus has campaigned for years for more police transparency and oversight. That included getting Anchorage voters to approve new taxes to outfit police officers with body cameras in 2021, and pushing APD to follow through.
The revised policy follows an unusual string of five Anchorage police shootings from May 12 to July 8. Officers killed three people and wounded two. They’re the first since officers were equipped with body cameras. In the first shooting, a neighbor’s security video appeared to contradict the department’s initial narrative, renewing public demands to release police videos and for more oversight.
The policy, notably, does not include an appeals process if the chief declines to release recordings. The Anchorage Assembly asked for that in a resolution last week that passed 9-1.
After discussing the policy further with the Assembly on Friday, the department did make some small changes to its initial draft. But an appeals process didn’t come up.
Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case said he didn’t want to delay the other policy revisions.
“You know, it looks good on paper in the resolution, but how do we make that actually work?” he said. “And there’s ways you could do it, but I definitely wanted that to be a broader discussion.”
Case said he expects the appeals process to come back up when its main Assembly proponent, Vice Chair Meg Zaletel, gets caught up. Zaletel is traveling, and missed the meeting on Friday. She said Tuesday she wouldn’t be able to immediately comment.
The body camera policy is subject to review in a year, though Case said it can be changed sooner.
Case said the department is aiming to publish recordings of the first police shooting on Monday. He said the department is working on getting the family of the man killed in that incident, Kristopher Handy, in to see the recordings before they’re published.
He expects recordings from the fatal shootings on June 3 of Tyler May and June 19 of Lisa Fordyce-Blair to follow.
The release of recordings from the other two wounding incidents are likely to be delayed significantly, Case said, because criminal cases are pending against the men police shot, Kaleb Bourdukofsky on June 1, and Damien Dollison on July 8. Case said the public can expect a deeper explanation on those delays to come.
Just last week, state officials who investigate local police shootings explained their position that body camera videos shouldn’t be released until after their investigation wraps.
The state’s Office of Special Prosecutions also concluded last week that the APD officers who shot Bourdukofsky were legally justified.
Jeremy Hsieh covers Anchorage with an emphasis on housing, homelessness, infrastructure and development. Reach him atjhsieh@alaskapublic.orgor 907-550-8428. Read more about Jeremyhere.
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