Southcentral

The Anchorage Police Department is now using artificial intelligence software to better review investigative data. It’s the first time APD has adopted AI for department use.

Police Chief Sean Case told Assembly members Tuesday night that the department has been testing a software called Closure for four months. He said the program is able to analyze large amounts of data.

“There’s some cases where you have detectives listening to over 1,000 hours of jail call data to try to find a word, a phrase, a name, a threat, things like that,” Case said. “And so when we tested the software, one of the things that we primarily used it for was throwing in jail call data.”

Case said the department had previously tested a different AI software for writing reports, but officials decided not to adopt it.

Case said the city’s municipal attorney and prosecutors have reviewed the software, and determined it would not negatively impact the prosecution of cases.

The Assembly unanimously approved a five-year contract with Closure for $375,000 at its meeting Tuesday.

Alaska State Troopers are asking Kenai residents to be on high alert after a bear attack left a jogger seriously injured on Tuesday morning.

The attack occurred in a neighborhood near the intersection of Chinook Drive, just west of the Kenai Spur Highway. According to a trooper dispatch, a 36-year-old woman was attacked near her driveway at around 5:45 a.m. She was later found by a neighbor and flown to an Anchorage hospital.

Officials with the Kenai Police Department and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game assisted troopers in searching for the bear. Troopers say the bear has not yet been found, and will continue to search the area. It is unclear what type of bear caused the attack.

Troopers say residents should be cautious when going outdoors. They recommend supervising pets and children, and securing attractants like trash or food. If you see a bear, troopers say keep a safe distance and do not approach it.

The Trump administration has announced plans to hold six oil and gas lease sales in Cook Inlet over the next six years, starting next March.

The plan “ensures Alaskans benefit from new jobs, stronger local economies and long-term investment in their communities,” the Interior Department said in an emailed statement.

Southcentral Alaska depends on natural gas from Cook Inlet for heat and electricity generation, but industry has shown only mild interest in the area in recent years.

It takes more than a lease sale to boost production, said Larry Persily, a former Kenai Peninsula Borough official for oil and gas matters.

“ That’s the first step. But there’s not really a shortage of opportunities in Cook Inlet. There’s more a shortage of capital and interest,” he said. “So I guess the first test we’ll see is who bids in March of 2026.”

Hilcorp is the primary producer of Cook Inlet gas. It has been the only bidder in the last two federal offerings. The company has warned that it may not be able to supply enough gas by 2027 to meet Southcentral’s demand.

Persily said the newly announced lease schedule doesn’t solve the near-term problem.

“Because by the time you have a lease sale and you get permits and you explore and you find something to turn to production, it’s probably not going to come in time,” he said. “So dealing with the Southcentral gas shortage is going to have to come from existing leases” or outside the region.

The offshore oil and gas leasing plan announced this week was mandated by Congress in the reconciliation bill it passed in July.

An immigrant seeking asylum in Anchorage was arrested outside the restaurant where he worked and detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials earlier this month.

ICE officials said they detained Santiago “Diego” Martinez, 30, for having a drunken driving conviction. However, his attorney said ICE admitted they made a mistake – Martinez does not have a criminal conviction – but he remained in custody as of Monday.

It was the morning of Aug. 11 that Jennifer Choi got a call from Martinez’s girlfriend, who said he needed help. Choi went behind her restaurant, Sushi Motto, and saw ICE officers detaining Martinez.

“So when I go, Diego was in the car,” Choi said. “And then I said, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ They say he don’t have a green card. I tell them, he has a green card. He has a green card. I tell them, like two, three times, but they said, ‘We have to take him.'”

Martinez had worked for Choi for more than five years as a sushi chef. She said he was a great employee.

“He has a good heart,” Choi said. “He helped, even though he’s a sushi chef, he helped in the kitchen, dishwash, whatever needed help. He did everything. He never complained.”

Martinez is a Mexican national who was in the country illegally, ICE spokeswoman Christine Cuttita said in an email. ICE officials first encountered Martinez in 2019 when he entered the country and was arrested by airport police, Cuttita said. His case was dismissed by a judge in 2022 for “prosecutorial discretion.”

Margaret Stock, Martinez’s attorney, said Martinez is an Indigenous person from Mexico and was seeking asylum in the United States. The charges for his initial immigration arrest were dismissed, because the judge ruled he had a valid asylum case, Stock said.

“He does have a very good reason not to return,” Stock said. “I mean, people in the family have been killed and murdered.”

It’s not uncommon for asylum cases to take years to resolve, she said.

Cuttita with ICE wrote that Martinez, “jeopardized any legal privilege to remain in the United States when he was arrested by the Anchorage Police Department on Nov. 12, 2024, for driving under the influence.”

But the charges were thrown out, Stock said, and Martinez doesn’t have a drunken driving conviction on his record.

“I talked to the ICE people, and they were operating on misinformation that he had a DWI conviction, which he doesn’t have,” Stock said. “But they claim that was the reason, on the telephone to me, that they were arresting him, was that he had a DWI conviction.”

Stock said the ICE officials told her they made a mistake arresting Martinez, since he doesn’t have a drunken driving conviction, but they still won’t release him.

“They told me that once they grab somebody, they’re not allowed to release him anymore,” Stock said. “And they say that this is a new rule that has been made up by the DHS leadership, that people who are pending asylum, they can just grab them anytime and put them in detention.”

Cuttita said that convictions and arrests can both jeopardize someone’s immigration status. But Stock said the Department of Homeland Security isn’t following the law.

“I think it’s illegal and it’s un-American,” Stock said. “It’s unconstitutional, and then on top of it, there’s obviously errors in the system. So how can we trust the Department of Homeland Security when they make these kinds of egregious errors all the time?”

For now, it remains unclear if Martinez will be deported.

Stock said she was able to meet with Martinez when he was being held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, but the opportunities were limited.

“He was freezing cold and shivering while he was talking to me,” Stock said. “He said it’s freezing in there, and then he also told me that they would only let him make one phone call a day. They’ve denied me access to speak with him because they have special rules that attorneys aren’t allowed to go in there for huge chunks of the day. You know, they have hours that are off-limits to attorneys.”

Those rules, Stock said, contradict what ICE’s website says about the Anchorage Correctional Complex, that attorneys can access clients from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day.

Martinez was transferred to a detention center in Tacoma, and Stock is there, too, working to get him released. But she said she was worried that the center will have similarly harsh conditions and the same lack of access as the Anchorage jail.

Meanwhile, Choi, Martinez’s boss, said she’s concerned about how his detention will impact her business and her employees.

“Everybody is getting sad, like, depressed, I think,” Choi said. “And, you know, some people, they don’t even want to work, even though they have a green card. You know, they’re just scared to work.”

Choi said she’s also pitching in to try to get Martinez back to Alaska.

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Friday at Anchorage’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Here are 12 things to know about the historic, and controversial, summit.

1. Where is the meeting taking place and when?  

Anchorage’s military base: Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

But the White House has, so far, released few other additional details, like at what time they’ll meet and how long they’ll be here.

2. Wait. Why are they meeting in Anchorage? 

President Trump announced last Friday that they’d meet in Alaska. We’re not totally sure how they landed on the location.

Meetings like this often take months to plan, but this one came together in a week. CNN reported that scrambling organizers weighed other Alaska cities, too, and determined Anchorage was the only viable option. Within the city, only JBER met security requirements.

Also, Anchorage is about 4,300 miles from the Kremlin, and about 3,300 miles from the White House, so you could argue it’s sort of a midway point.

Otherwise, Alaska has a long and complicated history with Russia. Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867 and, during the Cold War, the Anchorage base was key in countering the Soviet Union.

3. Do we know what they’re talking about? 

Russia’s war with Ukraine.

This will be the first time Trump and Putin will meet face-to-face since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But the White House has tamped down expectations of a breakthrough that might lead to a ceasefire. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the meeting will be a “listening exercise” for Trump.

“Only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present,” Leavitt said. “And so this is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end.”

4. Has Putin ever visited the U.S. before? 

Several times. Most recently, in 2015, he was at the U.N. in New York for tense talks with then-President Obama over Ukraine and Syria. In 2001, he made a state visit, stopping in Washington, D.C., New York and Texas. In 2007, he visited then-President George W. Bush at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. He’s also attended multiple international summits.

But this will be the first time Putin, or any Russian president, has visited Alaska.

5. But it’s not uncommon for world leaders to stop at JBER, right?

Right. In its prior incarnation, Elmendorf Air Force Base hosted many visits from presidents and world leaders, often because it was a convenient refueling stop for flights between Washington, D.C., and Asia, or between Europe and Asia. President Nixon and Emperor Hirohito met at the base in 1971, the first time the reigning monarch of Japan set foot on foreign soil. The next year, on his way home after his historic trip to China, Nixon spent the night at the home of Elmendorf’s top general.

Most presidents since statehood have landed at Elmendorf and met with local dignitaries or made some kind of address, including former President Biden and Trump during his first term. President Obama went farther afield on his 2015 trip to Alaska, even visiting Snow City Cafe in downtown Anchorage where he took selfies with fans and ordered cinnamon rolls.

6. Aside from the meeting, do we know what else Trump and Putin are doing in Alaska? 

So far, it looks like they are making a day trip of it. We’ve heard no plans for either of them to leave JBER.

7. Will there be any street closures or other traffic impacts I should know about? 

Not that we know of…yet.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Shannon McCarthy with the Alaska Department of Transportation said there were no anticipated street closures and no known traffic impacts in the city. Any updates on Friday will be posted to 511.alaska.gov.

8. I’m flying in or out of Anchorage on Friday. How will this affect my flight?

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a Temporary Flight Restriction over Anchorage airspace for Friday from 9:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. This restriction mainly impacts all non-commercial flights out of Anchorage airports, including sites like Merrill Field and Lake Hood.

But most commercial flights shouldn’t see any major disruptions, said Lex Yelverton at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. She said some flights in and out of Ted Stevens on Friday may experience minor schedule changes or delays of anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes. It’s likely that the airport won’t receive exact information on which flights will be affected until Friday, so Yelverton said anyone travelling should be prepared for delays and build some extra time into their schedules. She said commercial airlines will have the most up-to-date information about specific flights.

9. Anchorage School District students return to class Thursday and Friday. What’s the district doing to prepare? 

In a message to students and families on Wednesday, ASD said school will go on as planned this week. The message said that schools around JBER, including the three public elementary schools on base, might experience “minor traffic disruptions, depending on how things play out once both presidents arrive.” In some areas of the city, there may be increased security or air activity, but ASD said they’re expecting any impacts to schools to be minimal.

10. What will security be like in the city?

Anchorage Police Department spokesman Chris Barraza said city police will have an increased presence around town, with additional officers on patrol starting late Thursday night. There will also be increased security on Friday at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, according to the airport spokesperson.

11. Do we expect a big influx of people in the city for the meeting?

Yes.

Barraza, at APD, estimated 700 journalists from all over the world will be arriving in Anchorage this week. As of Wednesday afternoon, he couldn’t provide an exact number for dignitaries or other visitors related to the summit. And, of course, there are already a lot of visitors here because it’s peak tourism season in Alaska.

12. Are there any protests or rallies planned? 

Yes. There are protests and demonstrations planned all over the state in support of Ukraine and democracy, including in Homer, Fairbanks, Sitka and Petersburg.

In Anchorage, there are a few planned demonstrations: a peaceful protest in solidarity with Ukraine at 4:30 p.m. Thursday near the Midtown Mall, at the intersection of the Seward Highway and East Northern Lights Boulevard. Another protest is planned for noon on Friday on 510 L Street. Plus, Anchorage Stands with Ukraine plans to put up a massive Ukrainian flag on the Park Strip Friday afternoon.

The Alaska Republican Party is also planning a rally in support of Trump near the Midtown Mall on Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The White House has selected Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson for Friday’s meeting of President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, multiple media outlets are reporting. The reports don’t mention what time the leaders will meet.

The Trump administration has announced few details so far, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the meeting will be a “listening exercise” for Trump and that the two presidents are expected to meet one on one to discuss Russia’s war with Ukraine.

“Only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present,” Leavitt said. “And so this is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end.”

Meanwhile, progressives in Anchorage are planning demonstrations. Stand UP Alaska and Alaska March On, among other groups, announced they plan to demonstrate Thursday at 4:30 in Midtown and Friday at noon outside the Anchorage offices of Alaska’s U.S. senators.