Southcentral

The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center raised over $30,000 in less than two days to rebuild an animal shelter after it was destroyed by high winds Monday. No animals were harmed.

The facility cares for injured and orphaned animals from across the state, like bison, caribou and muskox.

The Sitka black-tailed deer shelter was demolished by a windstorm that swept through much of Southcentral Alaska last week. Wind gusts in the Portage area peaked at 82 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

The center, about an hour south of Anchorage, launched a fundraiser Wednesday to raise $30,000 to rebuild the shelter, and they exceeded their goal in about 36 hours. The executive director, Sarah Howard, said she was blown away by the support.

“Just super gracious for everyone’s support in the help that we’re now going to be able to immediately start building on Monday,” Howard said.

Nearly $32,000 had been raised by Friday afternoon.

Photos posted by the facility Wednesday show the shelter’s roof completely detached and its walls scattered across the enclosure. The shelter is used during harsh weather, feeding, and as a recovery area for deer after medical procedures.

There are five deer at the center, and they’re known as the friendliest animals at the facility. Howard said the Sitka-deer have been on alert since the windstorm and have been hanging out in the back of their enclosure.

“They’re some of the friendliest animals we have on the property, but they’re also very aware of their surroundings,” she said. “I’m sure when this building started to creak and crack, that probably freaked them out quite a bit.”

There are an estimated 200,000 of the species in Alaska, concentrated in Southeast Alaska. It’s the most-hunted big game species in the region, according to Fish and Game. The average life-span of a Sitka black-tail is between 10 and 15 years.

A consultant hired by Anchorage’s municipal attorney has nearly a dozen recommendations to improve police de-escalation and use of force policies, after officers fatally shot a local teenager last year.

Anchorage police shot and killed 16-year-old Easter Leafa after they responded to a domestic disturbance at her home. Leafa had reportedly threatened one of her sisters with a knife, and she had the knife on her when officers killed her. State prosecutors later deemed the shooting as legally justified.

The killing sparked outrage in Anchorage, and concerns over how the police department handles use of deadly force. Shortly after Leafa’s death, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance announced a series of reforms, including a third-party review of the shooting.

The review was completed in November by Christopher Darcy, a former Las Vegas police officer and now consultant on law enforcement. The city just released Darcy’s report to the public on Thursday.

Darcy said he couldn’t speak to the specifics of his report for legal reasons. But broadly, he said, he’s found that police departments across the country often tailor how they respond to critical incidents when they arrive on the scene, and he thinks they should be more proactive.

“We need to start at the very moment the call is received,” Darcy said. “So the tactics and the training and the subsequent policies that reinforce that and the accountability aspect is really all focused on the actions that are starting before we arrive.”

Anchorage’s municipal attorney declined to release Darcy’s full report, citing legal concerns, but requested he compile a separate public report citing his recommendations for training and policy changes.

In the report, Darcy listed 11 recommendations, ranging from better management of high-risk responses and incorporating less lethal options into use of force training to improving interactions with both diverse communities and witnesses of police shootings.

Municipal attorney Eva Gardner said in conversations she’s had with the police department, the recommendations seem doable.

“I was pleased when I spoke with the chief about these recommendations, some of them were things that were already in progress,” Gardner said.

As part of the reforms announced by LaFrance, Gardner said the city of Anchorage has also put out a bid for a third-party group to take a holistic look at APD.

“That is for the more comprehensive look, where we will bring in fresh eyes to look at all aspects of APD training, supervision, policy that relate to de-escalation, use of force and cultural awareness,” Gardner said.

The deadline for contractors to submit bids to the city is Feb. 13.

A group of homeowners in Birchwood have filed a lawsuit against the Native Village of Eklutna over a small-scale casino planned near Anchorage. The tribal gaming hall would be built on about eight acres of land, a few miles off the Birchwood exit on the Glenn Highway.

Sharon Avery, the acting head of the federal National Indian Gaming Commission, was also named in the lawsuit. Earlier this year, Avery signed off on the tribe’s plans to build the project on a Native allotment leased from the Ondola family.

“There’s a lot of horses and dog mushing, and that kind of activity out here,” said Debbie Ossiander, who lives about a mile from the site.

Ossiander is co-chair of the Birchwood Community Council and supports the lawsuit. She says the council worries that the Eklutna Tribe’s project will destroy the rural character of the area.

“People are fearful of what kind of a traffic impact that would engender. It would be a draw certainly,” Ossiander said. “People would drive from Anchorage and all over the valley to come to this locale.”

Ossiander says there are some other big unknowns, like the impact of drainage from the casino’s parking lot into nearby Peter’s Creek, a salmon spawning stream. Ossiander says she’s also frustrated about the lack of information about the project.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of eight people who live in the Birchwood Spur Road neighborhood, next to the proposed gaming hall. They are represented by attorney Don Mitchell, a longtime opponent of tribes in Alaska.

Mitchell would not comment for this story, but his lawsuit questions Eklutna’s tribal status as well as the existence of tribes in Alaska.

Aaron Leggett, the president of the Native Village of Eklutna, said in a statement that the litigation is disappointing.

He said Mitchell’s claim that there are no tribes in Alaska has repeatedly been rejected by the courts.

As for the complaints from neighboring landowners about the potential impacts on the Birchwood community, Leggett said the public will have a chance to comment on the project during a federal environmental review.

The land in question is under federal control on a Native allotment awarded to Olga Ondola in 1963. It’s also within the Eklutna Tribe’s traditional territory.

In 2016, the Eklutna Tribe asked the U.S. Department of Interior to make the property eligible for gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. It also sought approval of the Tribe’s lease of the land from the Ondola family, but in 2018, the Department issued a decision against the Tribe and concluded that the property did not constitute “Indian lands.”

That decision was reversed earlier this year following a new interpretation of the law from Bob Anderson, the solicitor of the U.S. Interior Department.

Anderson, the agency’s chief legal officer, ruled that the Eklutna tribe has jurisdiction over the Ondola Native Allotment, which opened the door for the tribe to win approval from the National Indian Gaming Commission in July. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has not yet issued the final permit, pending an environmental assessment.

The lawsuit against the Eklutna Tribe cites a long legal history, going back to 1884. It cites past decisions from Congress and previous Interior Departments against tribes in Alaska.

Tribal proponents say the courts have long put those claims to rest. They point to a Federal Register which lists 574 tribes and Alaska Native entities, including the Native Village of Eklutna.

Tribal leaders like Richard Peterson say the lawsuit’s claims about the lack of tribal status in Alaska are ridiculous. Peterson is president of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the largest tribe in the state.

“When you attack tribes, you are attacking Alaska,” said Peterson, who called the lawsuit short-sighted.

He believes the community will benefit in the long run from the gaming hall, based on the Eklutna Tribe’s track record for environmental stewardship and its clean-up of abandoned military sites and other projects.

“They’re doing wonderful things for their community,” he said. “This has implications on all tribes. All 229 should get behind Eklutna,” Peterson said.

The Eklutna Tribe may face opposition from another quarter. Gov. Mike Dunleavy recently put out a list of priorities in preparation for the incoming Trump administration. One of those calls for reversing Anderson’s recent decision to greenlight the Eklutna Tribe’s proposed gaming hall.

Opponents of the project say Native allotments are not subject to state and local taxes and worry that they’ll have to shoulder the burden for paying for the potential impacts of the gaming hall, such as the need for increased public safety services and road upgrades. But supporters of the project say the Tribe could be an ally in bringing more services and road improvements to the area.

The Eklutna Tribe has said there will be two phases of the project, which will be called the Chin’an Gaming Hall. Chin’an means “thank you” in the Dena’ina Athabascan language.

On its website, the Tribe says it plans to open as a modest 50,000 square foot facility on about six acres of land. It would have no card or table games and but will start out with 350 to 550 electronic gaming machines and expand to 700. There would also be a full-service restaurant with plans to eventually apply for a liquor license.

Marnell Companies, a Las Vegas based firm run by the Marnell family, will design, develop and manage the gaming hall.

Supporters of the project say it will fit in with existing development, which includes an airport, railroad operations, a convenience store, a bar and a small wood panel manufacturing plant operated by Spenard Builders Supply.

The Tribe says it’ll use revenues from the gaming hall for scholarships, housing, healthcare, and cultural programs.

This story has been corrected. The public will have a chance to comment on the project during a federal environmental review.

Homer’s Kristen Faulkner returned to Alaska Friday for the first time since winning two gold medals at the Paris Olympics last summer. She arrived at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, greeted by a small contingent of fans and family chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” as she descended the airport steps.

Faulkner won an individual gold medal in the women’s cycling road race, beating some of the world’s best endurance cyclists. She won her second gold medal with Team USA in the team pursuit event.

Faulkner currently lives in San Francisco but grew up in Homer. She said she plans to see old friends and eat fresh fish while home for the holidays.

“I got chills just looking out the window on the airplane,” Faulkner said. “I miss Alaska salmon. We always cook salmon and going skiing and we’re going to go snowmachining in a few days and we always read The Grinch and The Night Before Christmas as books before Christmas Eve.”

Faulkner attended high school in Massachusetts where she competed in three sports. She then rowed competitively at Harvard University before taking up road cycling in 2016. She moved to San Francisco in 2018 and began cycling competitively in 2020. Faulkner said she appreciated the support of her hometown and home state during the Olympic Games.

“It’s so special. I think being from Alaska you feel like the whole state is your community,” Faulkner said. “I’m from a small town, Alaska is a small state, community-wise, and just to feel like I was in Paris with the full backing of my home basically is, yeah, I feel like I’m racing for something bigger than myself.”

Homer Mayor Rachel Lord is excited to welcome Faulkner home. She recalled the beginning of the school year when West Homer Elementary School Principal Eric Waltenbaugh showed Faulkner’s gold medal performance to students, then pointed to her name on a plaque on the wall from when she was a student there.

“The pride and the enthusiasm that those kids felt and feel, and that our staff feel, and our community feels, it’s just really awesome and inspirational,” Lord said.

Former Homer Mayor Ken Castner has known Faulkner since she was a child. Faulkner performed nearly every part in Homer’s annual holiday production of The Nutcracker Ballet, which Castner organizes.

“The sense of community is strong whenever you have excellence showing itself, and there’s that local pride of being part of a community that nurtures that sort of result,” Castner said.

Faulkner will head back to Europe in January to compete with her professional cycling team EF-Oatly-Cannondale.

“One of my big goals for the season is to win a stage of the Tour de France and hopefully defend my title as U.S. National Champion,” Faulkner said. “It’s been a whirlwind you know, a lot of cameras and interviews but all really really great. I’ve been doing a lot of speaking events and hopefully inspiring more youth to go do their dreams.”

A welcome ceremony in Homer is planned for Dec. 27 in the Mariner Theater at Homer High School at 3 p.m.

A federal judge has ordered the Municipality of Anchorage to pay $150,000 to the survivors of a man with mental health issues who died six years ago during a standoff with police.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled Monday that officers used “excessive force” in the case of Dan Demott Jr., who died in his home’s crawl space. He was 66 years old. The Anchorage Daily News first reported the ruling.

Gleason’s decision is a rare finding of liability for officers in a local death. State prosecutors have declined to criminally charge any of the Anchorage officers who shot eight people this year, five of them fatally.

The Anchorage Police Department told the ADN that the city plans to appeal the ruling. Police officials declined an interview request Wednesday, but said in a statement that the department is “in the process of carefully reviewing the details and implications of the decision.”

“We take such matters seriously and are committed to upholding the highest standards of conduct within our department,” police said in the statement. “As part of our ongoing commitment to this community, we will ensure that our response reflects our dedication to serving the community effectively and responsibly. We will have a clearer understanding of the next steps once a review has been completed.”

The decision comes in a lawsuit filed by Demott’s daughter, Kelsey Howell, in 2020. Howell said in an interview Wednesday that Demott had retired at a relatively young age and enjoyed helping people. She said she did not believe police took her father’s mental condition into account during the encounter that led to his death.

“I just couldn’t imagine what my dad felt or was going through in his last hours,” she said. “It was just like a nightmare that came true to him.”

According to Gleason’s 36-page ruling summarizing the case, Demott had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and manic depression before the Nov. 18, 2018 standoff.

Howell said Demott got into an argument with her that day, prompting her to call 911 at about 6:30 p.m. and report that her father had barricaded his front door, was “ripping down curtains” and was experiencing delusions that the police were watching him. She said Demott needed to return to the Alaska Psychiatric Institute, where he had previously been treated, and that he wasn’t taking his medication.

“She also warned the dispatcher that Demott may not cooperate with the police because he had attacked the police on one prior occasion approximately four or five years prior,” Gleason said.

Howell said in the interview that her father had faced earlier struggles with his mental health.

“Sometimes he would have manic episodes that would last for a while, and usually he would go to API and get on the right track,” she said. “I’ve experienced it all my life.”

On that night in November, she said, she and her children quickly left the home, then spoke with arriving officers.

“We were put in a squad car near the residence, and then after a while, we got moved farther away and (the) SWAT team was there,” Howell said. “It was just intimidating, like how it elevated so quickly from just calling to the police and letting them know my dad’s mental state.”

As police reached the scene, they saw Demott holding a sword inside the home. Howell’s brother told police Demott also had a BB gun, but a .22-caliber rifle and handgun were locked in a safe and his father had lost the key. He also said Demott did not have a cellphone, landline or internet access.

Demott remained inside with a roommate, Michael Girardin.

Police obtained a warrant for Demott charging him with assault for placing Howell in fear of being injured, criminal mischief for causing damage inside his home and resisting arrest by barricading himself inside. The incident was marked as a case of domestic violence.

At about 7:40 p.m., call logs showed police “began making several announcements to the residence,” Gleason said in the ruling. Roughly half an hour later, members of the department’s SWAT team arrived.

They included two sergeants at the time: Luis Soto, assigned to a command center several blocks away, and entry team leader Steven Childers. According to the ADN, only Childers still appears to be with the department.

Police made dozens of announcements over a loudspeaker directed at Demott and Girardin. Members of the department’s Crisis Intervention Team were also present, but never used the device.

“At no time was the loudspeaker used to try to negotiate with Demott or Girardin, or to try to address Demott’s mental health needs, or to serve as a means for family or friends of Demott to communicate with him,” Gleason said.

At about 11 p.m., police fired “knock-knock” foam rounds at the home, breaking a large front window. An officer saw Demott retreat from a window, which Gleason said “was the last time that Demott was reportedly seen alive.”

Half an hour later, police heard a “loud banging” inside the home. Officers deployed tear-gas grenades into the home, causing Girardin to leave. Soon afterward, Childers deployed another tear-gas grenade into the home’s garage.

Girardin told officers that Demott was “experiencing a Vietnam flashback,” according to Gleason, and had threatened to shoot him if he left. He also said, however, that he did not see any weapons in the home, except he knew Demott had BB guns. He said Demott dropped his swords when police broke the window.

Demott had encouraged Girardin to join him in the home’s crawl space, calling it a “bunker,” but Girardin refused because it was too cold, the ruling said. The ambient air temperature that evening was 15 degrees.

Police deployed more tear gas into the garage and house and then sent in a robot that didn’t detect any movement inside the home. At about 1:30 a.m. the following morning, police deployed more tear gas into the crawl space, before Childers and other officers entered the home “at some point after” 2 a.m., the ruling said.

Demott was found dead submerged in water in the crawl space at about 4:15 a.m. An autopsy determined that he died of either hypothermia or drowning, but classified his death as an accident.

On Wednesday, Howell questioned police actions like breaking the home’s windows, given the evening’s low temperatures. She also said their tactics reinforced her father’s fears, even though Girardin had explained his state of mind to officers.

Howell sued the Municipality of Anchorage, as well as Soto and Childers, in November of 2020. She alleged that by supervising SWAT actions the officers had used excessive force while trying to arrest Demott, violating both state law and the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Attorneys representing the city argued that the force used wasn’t excessive under the circumstances. In an April case filing discussing the officers’ qualified immunity, which bars them from being sued over most official actions, the attorneys said that Demott had threatened to shoot patrol officers who first arrived at his home. They added that nobody was ever able to establish communication with Demott during the standoff.

“SWAT was confronted with a barricaded suspect and a potential hostage situation,” the attorneys wrote.

Gleason found that state law supported police efforts to arrest Demott, as a suspect in domestic violence committed within the previous 12 hours. But she also found that Demott didn’t pose a significant threat to others and was not using force against the officers, instead attempting to “disengage” with them.

“After Girardin left the residence, it was unconstitutionally excessive force for the SWAT team to continue to fire multiple rounds of chemical agents into the home, because Demott was suspected of only minor crimes, posed no apparent threat to the officers or others, and was engaged in only passive resistance,” Gleason said.

Soto and Childers later said that they believed Crisis Intervention Team policy didn’t apply to criminal suspects. But once Demott was alone, Gleason said, the officers were “constitutionally required to have considered a mental health intervention or other less invasive alternatives” before deploying more tear gas.

Howell said she hopes police learn to consider people’s mental health conditions during similar situations. After Gleason’s judgment, she said she was disappointed that the municipality responded by offering an appeal rather than an apology.

“I believe in court, one of the officers said, ‘Oh, we should have used more force, more, more,’” she said. “And it just, like – that really hurt to hear because, like at (that) time, my dad was deceased already or was dying.”

Gleason found that the police actions were “a substantial factor” in Demott’s death, awarding his estate $50,000 for his pain and suffering, as well as $50,000 each for Howell and her brother’s loss of companionship. She declined to award punitive damages in the case.

Howell thanked her attorney, Jeff Barber, for his work on the case. She also hoped that police would establish preventive measures to keep incidents like the one in which her father died from happening again.

She urged everybody involved to ask themselves a single question: “What can I do better next time?”

Natalie Rouse opened a large freezer on Thursday stocked with bags of assorted whale parts.

“So here are pieces of blubber,” she said. “And then we’ve got a little bit of baleen in here. And then I have another big trash bag of baleen, and then another sample bag.”

Rouse is a necropsy biologist with Alaska Veterinary Services, and she’s part of a team trying to learn more about the young fin whale that washed up dead last weekend near downtown Anchorage. Since then, hundreds of residents have flocked to the frozen mudflats to catch a rare sight of the massive whale carcass. Meanwhile, Rouse has been at the Ecosystem Biomedical Health Laboratory at the University of Alaska Anchorage, going through more than 65 samples her team took from the animal.

“We got samples of feces, stomach contents, from two different areas of the GI tract,” Rouse said. “We took samples of baleen, we took samples of the tongue, we took samples of the heart.”

Rouse said she typically conducts necropsies in warmer months, and the winter is a slower time of year at the lab. She said the timing of this whale presents both challenges and advantages.

“It bursts the tissues at the cellular level, when they freeze, so that degraded some of those samples,” Rouse said. “However, the other samples are probably decomposing a lot less quickly than they would when it’s warm out.”

She said her team already learned quite a bit from the samples, including that the whale was female, and a juvenile.

“It was eating because it had a lot of feces, it had stomach contents,” Rouse said. “And we have some signs that maybe had some non-specific signs of disease, but that could be incidental.”

Rouse said they’ve sent off some of the samples to the Lower 48 for a better look at any diseases the whale had, as well as for cellular examination. While finding out what killed the whale is one question they’re trying to answer, Rouse said there’s a lot more to be learned.

“There are people that look for harmful algal bloom toxins, and they do surveillance for that on every marine mammal that we’re able to give them samples for,” Rouse said. “There’s someone studying dive physiology. There’s somebody that is doing aging with different tissues. So yeah, we’re going to learn a lot from this whale, even if we don’t figure out what the cause of death was.”

Rouse said the whale washed up with the tides on Saturday. Getting it back into the ocean will be a different story, since any heavy machinery that could move the whale likely won’t be able to make it out on the frozen mudflats. She said she anticipates the whale will wash out with high tides set to hit the area in mid-December.

“The most direct way to get it, get rid of it, would be to let it go out with the tide, and that allows for it to be returned to the ocean, where it provides a lot of food for all the other creatures in the ocean,” Rouse said.

As residents continue to make the pilgrimage to the whale, Rouse hopes that people will be respectful of the creature, and she offers a few safety tips.

“All wildlife can carry zoonotic diseases, and we don’t know why this whale died,” Rouse said. “So it’s important to take the same precautions you would take with any other, you know, dead animal on the side of the road. And so don’t, you know, don’t let your dogs eat it, and you don’t want to touch it and then touch your eyes, ears, mouth, nose, that kind of thing.”

Rouse also said that walking on icy, frozen mudflats comes with its own risks, so if you’re going to try to get a look at the whale, bring some cleats.