Anchorage Assembly leaders introduce bill on body cameras for police

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Three members of the Anchorage Assembly have proposed a bill that will be considered next week that would affect the release of police body camera footage in the community.

In a statement, Assemblymen Daniel Volland and Meg Zaletel and Assembly Speaker Felix Rivera wrote that the proposal calls for the publication of all “recent police-involved shootings and critical incidents” within 30 days of the bill’s passage, if any occur at all.

It also calls on Anchorage police to allow the family of an East Anchorage man, Kristopher Handy, to view bodycam footage of the shooting that killed Handy on May 13, at no cost to the family.

The assembly said it would also call on Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s administration and the APD to reconsider their current policies on body cameras and look for alternative models “such as those published by the American Civil Liberties Union” and the Los Angeles Police Department.

The bill will be discussed in the regularly scheduled parliamentary session on Tuesday.

The move follows a series of police-involved shootings in Anchorage — five in less than two months — all of which Anchorage police said were captured on body cameras, but none of which have been released.

The fact that the footage was not made publicly available sparked a public outcry for transparency from advocacy groups and individuals.

Anchorage has seen an unusually high number of police-involved shootings this year, including:

• The fatal shooting of 34-year-old Kristopher Handy in East Anchorage on May 13
• The downtown shooting that injured 22-year-old Kaleb Bourdukofsky on June 1
• The fatal shooting in Fairview that killed 21-year-old Tyler May on June 3
• The deadly armed conflict in northeast Anchorage that left 58-year-old Lisa Fordyce-Blair dead on June 19
• The shooting Monday morning in East Anchorage that left 51-year-old Damien Dollison injured

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