Anchorage police report eighth officer-involved shooting of 2026 in two sentences

An Anchorage police officer was involved in a shooting on the 1900 block of East 37th Avenue, and the department's entire public account of it is two sentences that do not say whether anyone was struck.

The Anchorage Police Department posted the release at 11:20 p.m. on Sunday, September 13, 2026, under the byline of Gina Romero, director of the department's Community Relations Unit and its spokesperson. It reads in full: "The Anchorage Police Department is investigating an Officer Involved Shooting at the 1900 Block of E. 37th Avenue. More information will be forthcoming." Beneath it sits a case number, 26-24190.

The release does not give the day or time of the shooting. It does not say whether anyone died, how many officers fired, or what call brought officers there. No press conference is listed.

By the department's own numbering, it is the eighth officer-involved shooting in Anchorage in 2026. The August 18 release states it plainly: "This is the 7th Officer Involved Shooting of 2026."

Those two sentences are a template, not a departure. The August 13 shooting on Debarr Road was first announced as "APD is investigating an officer involved shooting in the area of the 6000 Block of Debarr Road. More information will be forthcoming." The August 18 and April 15 releases opened almost identically, and none of the three said whether anyone had been struck until updates days later, four days in each August case. Six of the seven earlier releases did carry more within a day, a narrative account or a linked press conference.

Across seven 2026 shootings, APD named the officer who fired within three to four days: three days after the March 28, April 7, April 15 and May 19 shootings, and four days after June 16 and each August shooting.

The department also publishes its own deadline. Five of this year's releases say the officer who discharged a weapon is placed on four days of administrative leave and that "their name will be released publicly 72 hours after the incident." That clock runs from the shooting itself, not from when APD posts notice of it, and because Sunday's release does not say when the shooting occurred, there is no way to say when the 72 hours will elapse.

Four of the seven earlier shootings this year killed the person shot. Micah Bonin, 43, died March 28 at the 12000 block of Shore Circle. Emil McCord, 33, died May 19 near Bragaw Street and Reka Drive. Deandrea Robertson, 33, was pronounced deceased at the scene June 16 at 8900 Old Seward Highway, in an exchange that wounded one officer twice in the lower body and struck a second in a ballistic trauma plate. Lora Brady, 53, was declared deceased August 18 after a SWAT callout at a multi-unit living facility on East 9th Avenue. The three people who survived were each charged.

Two of the eight cases have cleared the state review. The Alaska Department of Law's Office of Special Prosecutions completed its review of the May 19 shooting on September 8 and found that Officers Jacob Jones, Justin Miller and Alexander Roman were each legally justified in using deadly force against McCord, who pointed a handgun at officers after repeated orders to drop it. APD's release on the June 16 shooting says the office finished that review before the department published body camera footage on September 4.

APD has defended the short initial notice as the start of a process. In a statement titled "Message from the Chief," posted May 16, 2024, then-Chief Bianca Cross wrote that it is important to notify the public quickly after an officer-involved shooting, which the department abbreviates OIS: "to notify the public in a timely manner when an OIS occurs and to give a synopsis of events as we know them to be at the time." She was writing about a different shooting, after video circulated that appeared to differ from APD's initial account.

Sunday's release is the only public account of the East 37th Avenue shooting, and it contains no statement from anyone outside the department. Under the practice APD's own releases describe, the officer's name is due roughly 72 hours after the shooting itself, whenever that turns out to have occurred.