EDITORIAL: Can Anchorage’s new police chief make good on transparency promises?

After years of foot-dragging on a crucial transparency tool, new Anchorage Police Department chief nominee Sean Case is taking the correct tack. Asked in late June about how the department will handle body-worn camera footage — long a bone of contention for APD — Case was straightforward and surprisingly unequivocal. “I would like a timeline (for public release of body camera footage) because I think that’s the thing that sets the expectation,” Case said. “If we have a certain amount of time that we put in and this is when we want to release the bodycam footage, that kind of holds everyone off for that time period instead of immediately, from minute one, kind of raising that anxiety about what really happened.”

That’s a refreshing departure from the footage release policy — or lack thereof — so far espoused by APD and other Alaska law enforcement. Under current policy, body camera footage can be effectively impossible for the public to pry free from the agencies whose officers wear the cameras. As you can imagine, this breeds rumor and innuendo, as well as a tendency for the public to believe the worst, when use-of-force incidents take place. And Anchorage has seen an anomalous number of use-of-force incidents during the past few months, multiple of which have resulted in Alaskans’ deaths at officers’ hands. It may well be the case that law enforcement’s use of deadly force in these incidents has been by the book, although in at least one case a third-party video has appeared to differ substantively from police accounts of the incident.

Also, the withholding of footage has a compounding effect as police shootings stack up. An officer involved in a shooting this past week was also involved in the shooting of Kristopher Handy in Anchorage in May; the public release of body camera footage could help reassure residents that the department doesn’t have a problem with some officers instigating or aggravating conflicts.

And it doesn’t help matters that, in every shooting incident so far this summer, whether by Anchorage police or Alaska State Troopers, the response from department brass has been the same: No footage release, and no timeline for when that release might take place, other than the vague assurance of “when our investigation is complete.” Apparently, none of those investigations are yet complete, and it would likely be unwise to hold your breath waiting for them.

APD chief nominee Case, to his credit, understands how this black-box approach to body camera footage policy is corrosive to public trust in the department. He told the ADN in late June that he has already drafted a modified version of the body-camera footage policy that would provide a timetable for public release, and he’s running it by the municipal law department for approval.

If that modification to the policy comes to pass, it could be a major step forward for department transparency and an important accountability tool. For the public to maintain trust in law enforcement’s judgment, they must be shown that the department isn’t delaying or concealing the release of important information, and making the public release of body-camera footage an automatic, concrete process would set a positive expectation for residents.

But Anchorage has been down the road of body-camera transparency promises before, and in many instances, the reality of implementation has fallen far short of the initial vision for the cameras as an accountability tool. To reap the reward of sustained and improved trust from the Anchorage public, Case will have to follow through on his plans for a footage release timeline. The Assembly and Mayor Suzanne LaFrance would be wise to support and encourage APD’s follow-through on the matter, as it will be an early litmus test of the new administration’s ability to live up to promises of a government that works better for residents than it has during the past three years.