Anchorage police graduate a third big class as APD works to refill its ranks

Twenty-two recruits graduated from the Anchorage Police Department's academy Tuesday, the department's third class of 20 or more in a year. They now start field training, where they get hands-on experience before they can work as solo officers.

The three classes graduated 23, 20 and 22 recruits. Between mid-2023 and mid-2025, APD's announced graduating classes ranged from nine to 16.

From 2021 through part of 2024, more officers left APD than it hired each year, according to a staffing study by the consulting firm Certus that APD posts as its staffing report. In 2021, 40 officers left and 15 were hired. In 2023, 52 left and 34 were hired. "Despite having made a significant number of hires in recent years, the APD struggles to maintain staffing levels," the December 2024 study said.

In October, the department told the Anchorage Assembly it had 416 authorized sworn positions and about 42 vacancies, with this class still in the academy and recruits from earlier classes still in field training. Dispatch was eight people short of its 63 positions.

APD spent more than $10 million on overtime in 2025. Its overtime budget for this year is $4.9 million. "The reason their overtime is so hot is because of their vacancies," the city's budget director, Ona Brouse, told an Assembly committee in July. In August, she said police overtime spending was improving year over year.

APD has also converted some positions into community service officer jobs, which aren't sworn officer positions, because "we were having challenges getting enough police officer recruits," a department official told the Assembly in October. APD now has 21 community service officer positions, not all of them filled.

When the previous class arrived in December, Police Chief Sean Case said, "Every new officer increases our capacity to respond faster, support our neighborhoods, and keep Anchorage safe." The staffing study found patrol officers "under considerable stress," with workloads at "unacceptably high levels" on summer weekends from about 5 pm to 7 am. It said heavy workloads left patrol officers without enough uncommitted time for "other activities that address crime." The study put the average total response time to a call at about 50 minutes. It also noted that, according to research, rapid police response is "not a deterrent of crime."

The graduates are Dale Barnard, Marc Bethke, Jace Coburn, Bekime Deari-Alimi, Ian Duffy, Jonathan Evans, Caleb Freeman, Michael Freeman, Patrick Guinasso, Jacob Hill, Izon Hogan, Abigail Jendrusina, Derek King, Johann Lademann, Emmanuel Martinez, Grant Masten, OJ Mau, Samuel Neff, Ramzes Penitani, Jamie Paul Walker, Jacob Whetsell and Andrew Young.