City code says the drone report must state whether flights had warrants. It does not.

Anchorage police have flown drones over homes, apartment complexes, trailheads and street corners on hundreds of occasions since May 2022. The city code requiring the mayor to report those flights says the report must state whether the use was related to a search warrant. The report going before the Assembly on Tuesday has no such column.

That report is Information Memorandum AIM 139-2026, the annual unmanned aircraft accounting required under Anchorage Municipal Code 3.102.040. The log, released as a public record, tracks each flight by date, department, duration, location and purpose. Most entries list "Search." Anchorage Police Department flights covered SWAT callouts, homicide investigations and four officer-involved shootings, among other cases, and the log lists whether an arrest followed and a case number. Entries from other municipal departments lack those fields, and some APD entries are incomplete too. The same report states no municipal department has used facial recognition technology.

The longest flight on record ran 275 minutes over 616 N. Price on April 1, 2026, a SWAT operation that ended in an arrest. A homicide investigation kept a drone airborne for 267 minutes over 5215 Mockingbird Drive on Oct. 23, 2023.

The released record contains no municipal policy on how long footage is kept, who outside the department can access it, or when the public may see it. A separate APD policy governing the Real-Time Crime Center says APD "does not retain as public record any data from camera feeds unless there is a law enforcement purpose associated with a criminal investigation or public safety threat."

Police Chief Sean Case told the Assembly on Aug. 21 that Alaska's constitutional privacy doctrine is broader than federal Fourth Amendment standards. The retention limits he described were for automated license plate readers, not drones: data capped at 14 days, fewer than 10 employees with access to search functions, and quarterly assessments weighing public safety benefit against privacy risk.

Assembly Members Keith McCormick, Daniel Volland and Sydney Scout have an ordinance up for public hearing the same night. AO 2026-108 would repeal and replace the surveillance chapter, limit how long surveillance data is kept, require Assembly approval before the city acquires surveillance technology, and provide for audit and enforcement. A $599,000 Real Time Crime Center audio-visual purchase is also back before them, postponed twice since Aug. 4 with no motion pending.

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled in State v. McKelvey in 2024 that police may not conduct warrantless aerial surveillance of private property with high-powered optics under the state constitution. Meanwhile the city has gone without police oversight since January 2024, after an advisory commission ordinance died without a second. The drone log itself records no warrants either way.