Anchorage Assembly approves True North deflection contract with APD

The Anchorage Assembly voted 11-0 Tuesday to hire True North Recovery to run "deflection navigation" for the police department — a formal path to steer people who commit low-level offenses into behavioral health treatment instead of jail.

Here's how it works: when an officer contacts someone eligible for deflection, True North handles what Police Chief Sean Case called a "warm handoff" to services like substance-abuse counseling. True North then tracks whether the person completes the program and tells APD if they don't, at which point prosecution can proceed.

Case was careful about the contract's limits. "This RFP is for deflection navigation services, not deflection services themselves," he said — meaning True North connects people to treatment across the city rather than providing it, and not from any single site. He also distinguished it from True North's existing HOPE team work, which pairs peer-support workers with officers contacting people experiencing homelessness; the new service, he said, is about deflecting people who've committed a crime, "not focused directly for the homeless population."

That distinction mattered politically. One member pressed to separate this contract from a separate, contested proposal to site a True North facility in Fairview — and Case confirmed the navigation work isn't tied to any one location. A second member recused himself, disclosing that his brother-in-law works for True North, leaving 11 to vote.

The contract is funded through the city's opioid settlement money and begins connecting people to services once it takes effect.