Alaska has reviewed 22 police shootings since 2024 and charged no one

Alaska prosecutors have reviewed at least 22 police shootings since the start of 2024. Not one has led to a charge against an officer.

That is what the Department of Law's own record shows, and the real number of cleared cases may be higher. The department's Office of Special Prosecutions posts a notice when it finishes reviewing an officer-involved shooting, and every one on its index reaches the same conclusion: the officer was justified, or no charges will be filed. One notice in September 2024 closed eight cases at once. Three of those never got a release of their own, so the public count understates the total.

Some officers appear more than once. Three Anchorage police officers have been cleared in two separate shootings each. Officer Jacob Jones was cleared in the 2024 death of Kristopher Handy and again in the 2026 death of Emil McCord. Officer Alexander Roman was cleared in the 2024 shooting of 16-year-old Easter Leafa and again in the McCord case. Officer Isaac Kimball was cleared in two shootings a year apart.

The reviews cover shootings across the state, by Anchorage police, state troopers, and departments in Juneau, Homer and the North Slope, in cities and villages from Utqiagvik to Kasilof. And they clear the officer every time.

The office says it has reviewed every police shooting in Alaska since 2009, though no law requires it to. What changed in 2024 was that it started announcing the results. That means the public record can't say whether any review before 2024 ever produced a charge, and the office hasn't said whether one has in the 16 years it's been doing them.

The department defends the process as protecting both sides. The reviews "protect the due process for the person shot and the officer," then-Attorney General Treg Taylor said in 2024. Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore said they ensure "that officers continue to follow the criminal law in their use of force," and defended withholding body-camera footage until a review is done, citing "a tension between the public's desire for transparency and the constitutional due process rights of potential defendants."

One voice is absent from all of it. Across the 20 releases, 21 people who were shot are named. Not one relative, attorney or representative of any of them is quoted.

Not everyone accepts the arrangement, in which police investigate police and prosecutors alone decide whether to charge. The Tanana Chiefs Conference called in a 2020 resolution for an independent investigator and a civilian review board.

The record is also getting harder to check. The department has stopped posting links to the underlying documents, citing "resource constraints," and directs anyone who wants them to file a records request. It hasn't given a statewide shooting count since reporting nine in mid-2024. And two cases it listed as pending that year have simply never appeared in a later release.