Alaska Public Media

High winds in Southcentral Alaska Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday morning knocked out power to more 7,000 households in Matanuska Electric Association’s coverage area.

Most of the damage was caused by fallen trees, MEA spokeswoman Julie Estey said.

“These are pretty small, localized incidents,” she said. “They were widespread throughout our service areas, but they were primarily smaller outages impacting a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand members each, caused just by trees in the lines and downed lines and damaged equipment.”

The outages were reported in Chugiak, Eagle River, and from Palmer to Willow.

As of noon Monday, only 300 customers were without power.

“Most of those are in the Nancy Lake area,” Estey said. “They are associated with the larger 1300 person outage. We were able to make repairs and close in the majority of that line but the crew is just patrolling that final segment to make sure there is no additional damage. So we anticipate that they will be restored shortly as well, and we still have ten additional people in the Butte, and a few scattered single member outages as well.”

Winds between 70 and 80 mph rocked Turnagain Arm and Anchorage’s Hillside area Sunday night.

The National Weather Service reported gusts of up to 81 mph at one time during the night.

Police in Anchorage have hit a wall in an active homicide investigation.

With help from the FBI, they’re hoping to find a person who may have been involved.

The Anchorage Police Department took the rare step of holding a news briefing Sunday evening to share details about the death of Treyveonkindell Thompson, 18.

The young man’s body was found early on the morning of July 29 in East Anchorage.

Thompson was biking home, but his yellow Motiv brand mountain-bike wasn’t at the scene when they arrived, police said.

The head of the city’s homicide unit, police Sgt. Slawomir Markiewicz said police were able to collect enough information from witnesses to put together a sketch showing a man they believe was involved.

After circulating the image internally among officers and staff, as well as routinely during patrols, nobody can figure out who the person is.

“There’s a number of people that we looked at,” Markiewicz said. “Now I think we have to expand it, because we haven’t been successful, obviously. We haven’t solved this case.”

Though APD is leading the investigation, they routinely partner with state and federal partners when they can provide help. In this case, the FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information from the public that might help officials identify the person of interest depicted in the sketch.

The hope is that even though investigators can’t identify the man, perhaps there are citizens who can.

The case is similar to several other lethal incidents in Anchorage this year, in which residents have been killed while biking or walking along popular trails. But police refuse to speculate about unproven details or specify whether cases are related.

Those with information can call the FBI’s tip hotline, 907-276-4441.

Those wishing to remain anonymous can either call Anchorage Crime Stoppers at 907-561-STOP, submit information to www.anchoragecrimestoppers.com.

The state approved its first licenses for commercial cannabis businesses Thursday, a major step for prospective retailers hoping to open shop before year’s end.

Officially, the state’s first shop to be approved was Fairbanks’ Frozen Budz. The first for Anchorage is called Enlighten Alaska, located in Spenard.

Jane Stinson is one of the co-owners of the business and says getting the license is a major step forward.

“What this means to us is that we have a lot of work to do. So this’ll allow us to start our build-out, or continue with it. And start communicating, networking with all of our vendors and the folks who’ve already received their cultivation licenses,” said Stinson.

The state’s Marijuana Control Board has already approved dozens of cultivation licenses, allowing commercial growers to move ahead.

Though a few businesses have already received local approval, others, like Stinson’s, are still scheduled to go before local governments for another review process.

“We go in front of the Muni on October 18th for our special land use permit for marijuana,” said Stinson.

Though that’s the last significant regulatory hurdle for Stinson, many challenges remain as the new industry comes online. Major questions about transportation, financing, and security are still being figured out as officials, entrepreneurs, and customers grapple with commercial cannabis.

The board also approved the first licenses for manufacturing facilities, which are businesses that plan on making products like edibles and concentrates for sale in shops.

A large crowd of Anchorage residents gathered in a popular park that recently saw a double murder to question the mayor and police chief about crime.

It was a scene that at times devolved into impassioned shouting.

Though there were a few boos of disapproval, residents and officials also applauded and laughed with one another as Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and Police Chief Chris Tolley fielded questions for an hour-and-a-half from a crowd of almost 150 people.

The event was informal and happened under a pavilion in Valley of the Moon Park.

Less than two weeks ago, the affluent neighborhood near downtown Anchorage saw the unsolved murders of Bryant “Brie” DeHusson and Kevin S. Turner, which has left many nearby residents concerned about their safety.

Eva Gardner, who lives right next to the park, helped coordinate a letter signed by more than 90 people and sent to the mayor asking for solutions to a perceived rise in crime and violence.

She spoke about the discrepancy between assurances of safety from officials, and a feeling of worsening violent crime.

“That kind of jars when you look back last week at a warning APD put out about staying off the trails after dark,” Gardner said during a short interview.

She was referring to a statement issued by the police department not long after the Valley of the Moon killings advising residents not to travel alone at night through parks, trails or quiet streets, though several residents said those are exactly the reasons they live in the area.

Many of the questions touched on sensitive and overlapping topics within the city’s discussions of public safety: Petty theft, homeless camps, addiction, violent crime and growing speculation about the possibility of a serial killer.

Frequently the conversation hovered over issues of homelessness, which annoyed Rosalyn Thompson, who was friends with DeHusson.

Thompson lived in the neighborhood for three years, and said that while the fears are legitimate, she’s troubled by people’s quickness to point blame at the homeless.

“I mean it was a friend of mine that was murdered, and for no reason as far as I know,” Thompson said a little way aways from the crowd with her dog Daisy. ”

“It is concerning, and I feel like my hyper-vigilance is through the roof, especially since the mayor and police chief are just giving us fluffy political answers,” Thompson added. “I think people have a right to be concerned, but I wish they weren’t demonizing the homeless while they were at it.”

So far this year, Anchorage has had 25 homicides, as well as two officer-involved shootings and numerous other non-lethal shootings.

A Washington man has been indicted for fraudulently taking about $2.7 million from Alaskans.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Alaska is charging Floyd Jay Mann Jr., 55, with 11 counts of wire fraud and eight counts of money laundering.

Mann allegedly told his victims that he was going to receive millions of dollars from a class action lawsuit with a pharmaceutical company.

He promised the victims that if they helped pay his medical expenses and his legal fees, he would give them a substantial portion of the settlement.

Instead Mann gambled with the money at a casino and won more than $1 million.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Aunnie Steward said concerned family and friends alerted law enforcement to the scheme.

The investigation involved the IRS, the FBI and the Social Security administration. She said this type of scheme is fairly common, this one was just more successful than most.

More than a dozen victims gave money to Mann, and many of them were close to retirement age. “I’ve seen this in a lot of different fraud cases,” Steward explained, “where elderly folks will be targeted and be bilked of a lot of money because they’re not asking the same kinds of questions and researching in the same way that someone more familiar with computers in this day and age would do.”

Mann’s wife, Cheryl Mann, 51, also was charged with one count of social security fraud.

She continued to receive need-based benefits even though she and her husband earned hundreds of thousands of dollars at the casino.

Police officials in Anchorage announced Wednesday that they purchased a controversial piece of surveillance equipment used to track cell phones years ago, though used it minimally before discontinuing it altogether last year because the technology was out of date.

Speaking during a public safety committee meeting, Deputy Police Garry Gilliam told members of the Anchorage Assembly and public that the KingFish device, which can locate criminal suspects by mimicking a cell phone tower, was purchased in 2009.

Gilliam said rumors that the equipment let officials listen to phone calls and read text messages are inaccurate, and compared its capabilities to the commonly used app “Find My Phone.”

The assembly paid $119,200 for a KingFish model described as highly portable, but incapable of eavesdropping on active conversations, according to a purchasing request from APD approved on July 21, 2009.

“This is funded by a Homeland Security Grant,” explained then-Chief Rob Huen to the Assembly at the time. “It provides a capability of tracking suspect’s cell phone and additionally the ability to interrupt specific signals.”

Huen also described a two-part system obtaining a warrant to access the location of a suspect’s phone, then another to search the specific building or car where that phone might be located.

APD followed it’s internal policy of obtaining warrants before using the KingFish in all but one instance, which involved a missing person,Gilliam said. He estimated the total number of times police used the device was “about a dozen.”

Municipal Attorney Bill Falsey said the information is coming out as a response to a records request by the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, and a lack of clarity about how the KingFish was actually used.

Nationally, the ACLU has pushed law enforcement agencies to be transparent about using devices like this, nicknamed “stringrays.”

They say the equipment raises concerns about privacy because it can potentially collect large amounts of data from bystanders and citizens, and is generally subject to minimal, if any, public review.

Falsey said the administration will be releasing detailed documents in the near future, but can’t yet provide an estimate of when that will be.