Anchorage names police Lt. Brian Fuchs municipal Employee of the Year

Anchorage Police Department Lt. Brian Fuchs has been named the Municipality of Anchorage Employee of the Year, an honor his nominators tie to a nearly 30 percent drop in unsheltered homelessness in the city. The city recognized Fuchs Tuesday, Sept. 29, at its Annual Employee Awards Celebration. Six APD employees and units were nominated across the awards categories.

The 2026 Point-in-Time Count, the annual one-night census of people experiencing homelessness, found 291 people sleeping outside, a 28 percent decline from 2025, while municipal shelters operated at 100 percent capacity. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's Sept. 2 budget memo also cites a 28 percent decrease in unsheltered homelessness over the past year.

Fuchs commands three APD units that work with homeless residents and people in crisis: the Homeless Outreach Prevention and Engagement Team, the Mobile Intervention Team and the IMPACT Team. The department said those teams responded to 3,300 crisis calls and cleared more than 150 encampments. Fuchs also led APD's enforcement and community rollout of the city's new Title 8 public disorder codes, part of the city's criminal code.

This account comes from the department's announcement, which includes no outside voices. In a June 2023 statement, ACLU of Alaska Executive Director Mara Kimmel said "abating camps when people have nowhere else to go violates constitutional law, denies basic human dignity and comes dangerously close to criminalizing poverty."