On Oct. 13, this paper published an article by Kyle Hopkins that described how critical understaffing in the Municipality’s Criminal Division has caused numerous municipal misdemeanor cases to be dismissed on speedy trial grounds.
Over here in City Hall, the reaction to the article was: Yes. We know Anchorage deserves better. That’s why we’re here.
We live in Anchorage, too. We came to work for the Municipality — many of us trading private sector jobs for lower pay, longer hours, short-staffed offices, and messy problems — because we care deeply about this city and want to help.
When Mr. Hopkins reached out in late August, we worked with him collaboratively to provide answers to his questions. We welcome the transparency his article provides because sharing our challenges with the public is key to overcoming them.
But there’s more to the story. The purpose of this letter is to explain how we got here, what we have done, and where we plan to go from here.
First, some context: in Anchorage, the state of Alaska prosecutes felonies — the most serious crimes — and the Municipality prosecutes misdemeanors. Misdemeanors are lower-level crimes that have a maximum of one year of jail time.
But misdemeanors matter, immensely. They are the crimes that most pervasively affect Anchorage residents’ everyday lives. The Criminal Division has, for decades, proudly enforced the Municipality’s criminal laws. Its Domestic Violence Unit is a core part of the office’s identity: it was established in the 1990s after a municipal prosecutor was killed in a domestic violence crime.
When we came to the Municipality on July 1, we knew the Criminal Division needed attention. The last administration’s June transition report noted the Municipality’s low staffing and inability to prosecute cases.
The Municipality’s staffing issues across departments are well-known by now. In the municipal attorney’s office, the turnover rate under the last administration was staggering. The Criminal Division had 13 prosecutors at the start of the last administration; 10 of them had left by its end. The Civil Division was similarly hard-hit, losing 10 of 12 attorneys. Support staff — the backbone of the office — also left in record numbers. Turnover is hard in any workplace, but it is catastrophic in government legal offices that traditionally rely on institutional memory and mentorship.
Mr. Hopkins’ article accurately identified recruitment and retention issues as contributing to the prosecutor shortage. But we, as the people charged with running the government, don’t have the luxury of stopping there. We have a duty to dig deeper, identify the root causes of the recruitment and retention issues, and fix them.
For the past few months, we have been working to understand the problem and develop a plan. We have identified several issues that make the Criminal Division a challenging workplace: pay, training, technology, and outdated workflows all play a role. But the biggest issue is a longstanding lack of management and administrative attention. Recent leadership in the office was stretched too thin in court to spare time for management, and high turnover in the municipal attorney role itself did not help.
We began recruiting for a lead municipal prosecutor in June, but it was a tough search. We needed someone with the management experience to untangle the office’s longstanding problems, and who also had the courage to step into a difficult, high-stakes environment. Our new municipal prosecutor, Dennis Wheeler, who was a municipal attorney for six years under Mayor Dan Sullivan, checks all the boxes. Mr. Wheeler rejoined the Municipality on Oct. 7 and walked in the door knowing what questions to ask. He is already strategically tackling the office’s many challenges.
We are making progress. Since July 1, we have hired three new prosecutors, for a total of five since June. We have dedicated a role to training (held by former Municipal Prosecutor Dustin Pearson) to ensure our prosecutors are effective and consistent. Before Mr. Hopkins’ article came out, we reached out to the state of Alaska district attorney’s office. Within 24 hours, Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore was at City Hall, strategizing ways for the State to help. On Oct. 15, the State announced it would provide prosecutors to assist with trials. We are grateful for the offer and look forward to implementing this collaboration as soon as possible.
We have also been talking openly about the Criminal Division’s challenges to anyone who is listening: to the Assembly, the police,…
Read More: OPINION: Anchorage deserves better. That’s why we’re here.