Anchorage funded its crime center a year before code guardrails

The Anchorage Assembly funded its police Real-Time Crime Center nearly a year before taking up code-based privacy rules. The Anchorage Police Department adopted its own retention and access policies in February 2026, but a chief can rewrite them. Residents' written testimony asks the Assembly to stop expanding the center until limits sit in municipal code.

"This body funded an $11.8 million Real-Time Crime Center first, then wrote the rules. That is backwards," Daniel Bayer of Eagle River wrote, citing Article I, Section 22 of the Alaska Constitution. He said the Institute for Justice is tracking more than a hundred local governments that ended or refused license-plate camera contracts since 2025.

The Assembly approved a five-year Axon Enterprise contract Sept. 23, 2025, not to exceed $11,795,175.04. The center can take 750 camera feeds. As of August it drew on 250-plus traffic cameras, 238 registered private cameras and 11 integrated ones. Alaska News previously covered the Sept. 1 vote approving a $598,998.10 audio-visual buildout while the rules ordinance was still in hearing. Sharon Klotz had asked members to reject it, calling it "infrastructure for expanded surveillance." It passed 8-4.

Adrienne Canino, a data scientist, asked that facial recognition be folded into a broader biometric category, that AI models be barred from the data, and that the damages cap rise. "I request the cap be raised to $50,000," she wrote. Aaron Combs asked that the center "be shut down and defunded." Shane Taylor urged members to "move to dismantle it completely." Lisa Bricker backed the ordinance, writing that "safeguards for the technology failed to pass prior to the first purchase."

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance says the municipality banned facial recognition in 2023, that APD does not use Flock cameras, and that no feed can automatically track a person. Staff review footage manually, she said. Chief Sean Case, presenting a "Guardian" policing model Aug. 21, said policy caps plate-reader data at 14 days, limits searches to fewer than 10 employees and requires quarterly privacy reviews.

Three versions are on the table. The original AO 2026-108 would fix 14-day retention in code, ban joining outside surveillance networks, require an independent annual audit and set live-monitoring rules. The mayor's AO 2026-108(S) leaves retention to APD policy but codifies ALPR and RTCC policy requirements, 30-day notice of material changes, annual reporting, Assembly approval of capability-expanding contracts, and suspension for knowing, material violations. The sponsors' AO 2026-108(S-1) would allow sharing only for criminal justice purposes and only when required by law, warrant or court order, bar ALPR data to the DMV without an Assembly resolution, and allow suspension for any violation, including of the entire RTCC. The hearing closed Sept. 15. Debate begins Oct. 20.