Public Safety

The man who was slammed to the ground by a former Juneau police officer this summer is suing the City and Borough of Juneau and the officer in civil superior court. 

Christopher Williams, Jr. filed a lawsuit last week against the city and former Juneau Police officer Brandon LeBlanc for allegedly violating his civil rights during the arrest. The violent arrest knocked Williams unconscious. He was later medevaced out of town.

The lawsuit comes just over a month after the state’s Office of Special Prosecutions cleared the officer of criminal charges. Video of the July incident recorded by a witness circulated widely online and prompted a public outcry.

Jeff Barber is an attorney representing Williams. In an interview, Barber said the lawsuit seeks to hold the city and LeBlanc accountable. 

“It’s dehumanizing to see the way Mr. Williams was treated in this case by police, and so I think more people should be aware of these kinds of actions,” he said. “It represents an assault on human dignity when you see someone act like that.”

The lawsuit asserts several allegations of wrongdoing by both LeBlanc and the city. It claims that LeBlanc acted with “intentional malice” when arresting Williams, and that his actions led Williams to suffer severe and permanent physical injury. It says LeBlanc intentionally failed to render aid to Williams after he was injured. 

The lawsuit also claims the city is liable for hiring LeBlanc and failing to reasonably train and supervise the officer, who was previously sued by a man for excessive force and battery while he served in Louisiana. The jury in that lawsuit found LeBlanc not guilty. 

After Williams’ arrest in July, Leblanc was placed on paid administrative leave. He later resigned from his position just a day before JPD released the body-worn camera footage of the arrest. In his statements to the Office of Special Prosecutions, he denied any wrongdoing and said he acted out of fear for his own safety during the incident.

Juneau Police Chief Derek Bos defended the department’s hiring of LeBlanc during a presentation to the Juneau Assembly in late September, saying LeBlanc is “a good officer who made a very bad mistake.” 

Barber, William’s attorney, disagrees. 

“Yes, we’re seeking money damages from the entities that are responsible —  all the way from the top on down,” he said. “So if it looks like the City and Borough of Juneau shouldn’t have hired this guy in the first place, we’re going to hold them accountable for that.”

The lawsuit does not specify the amount of damages Williams seeks. 

Juneau’s City Attorney Emily Wright said on Tuesday afternoon that the city had yet to be served with the complaint and could not comment. 

Last week marked one month since the remnants of Typhoon Halong devastated communities in Western Alaska with high winds and flooding.

The scale of the destruction in the remote, isolated region is still only starting to emerge.

As of Thursday, the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management reported that 471 homes sustained major damage. Another 208 were destroyed. Among the 3,472 homes surveyed across the affected area, only about a quarter made it through the storm undamaged.

The storm killed one person and left two more missing.

The Association of Village Council Presidents, a regional tribal government consortium, reported that more than 50 communities saw impacts from the storm, with more than a dozen reporting serious damage.

The damage, especially in the villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, led residents to evacuate in what the Alaska National Guard called the largest airlift in the state’s history. After rescuing 51 people in the storm’s immediate aftermath, first responders evacuated nearly the entire population of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. More than 500 people are sheltering in hotels, and their long-term future remains in question.

Kipnuk

In Kipnuk, only the school and a handful of houses made it through the record flood in good shape. The vast majority of structures were damaged or destroyed — some 90%, according to the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

James Paul is one of a small group of locals remaining in Kipnuk and working on the immense task of rebuilding. There have been some small wins, he said — for one thing, the local school, still serving as a hub for the relief effort, is also now connected to village electricity. Some street lights are even on.

“They have been making good progress every day,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month.

But there’s a lot left to do. The community’s water system is still offline, and most homes don’t have power.

Meanwhile, Paul said, aid is surging in. Cargo planes drop off heavy equipment and building supplies.

“Every agency and everybody that comes out here, I think has been really helpful,” he said. “They want to help, and I can’t say enough (about) all the help we’re getting.”

A staggering amount of aid has been flowing to the region from governments, nonprofits and the private sector.

But it likely won’t be enough for large numbers of residents to return this winter. Paul said his future is uncertain.

“I’m not sure about that,” he said. “I want to keep working as long as I can stay here.”

But another resident, Benjamin Kugtsun, said he had no plans to leave — at least, as long as they keep making progress.

“As long as we’ve got power from our power plant and some lights that can power up how we’ve been living, we’re not going to leave,” he said. “We’re going to stay here and work on Kipnuk — rebuilding Kipnuk.”

Kwigillingok

In another village devastated by the storm, Kwigillingok Tribal Resilience Coordinator Dustin Evon said there’s just too much damage.

“We feel like it’s not going to be habitable through the winter,” he said.

Locals and aid workers are keeping busy working to restore the homes that can be saved, Evon said, lifting homes back onto their foundations, replacing insulation soaked by the flood, restoring water and power and so on.

But once the sun goes down, he said, Kwig feels like a ghost town.

“It feels empty, and it’s not as lively as it used to be before the storm,” he said.

For now, the focus is on restoring homes in place, but the long-term future for the village is miles away. The tribe’s members voted in the weeks after the storm to officially relocate about 20 to 25 miles northeast to higher ground, Evon said.

“A lot have said that if a complete rebuild happens in Kwig, many don’t feel safe coming back,” Evon said.

But financing that relocation, which could cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, will be a challenge.

Bryan Fisher, director of the Alaska Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Management, said finding funding for relocation will take time. At a town hall meeting in Anchorage this week, he said that the emergency funding the communities have access to now can be used for rebuilding homes and infrastructure and making them more resilient. The relocation work will have to be addressed with different types of funding later on, he said.

“The programs that we have to respond and recover from Typhoon Halong in this disaster will not relocate the communities. They’re intended to repair and replace damaged infrastructure, homes, personal property, subsistence, gear and equipment from the storm,” he said. ” However, we will be working with all of the agencies and the councils to talk about what we can do to support your desire — if you have it — to relocate in the longer term.”

Fisher said he hoped the currently available aid funding would at least buy communities time.

Napakiak

The village of Napakiak was already working on relocation to a nearby bluff when Halong hit — what the local tribe calls a “managed retreat” from the eroding banks of the Kuskokwim River. And Walter Nelson, who coordinates that effort, said the vast majority of homes in Napakiak were flooded during Halong. Approximately a dozen residents have yet to return to their homes, he said.

“I’m 65 years old. I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “I’ve talked to our eldest elder. He’s never seen anything like this, the aftermath of Halong.”

Still, Nelson said he’s grateful the damage in Napakiak was not as severe as it was in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok. For now, crews are working to dry out flooded homes, replace insulation and restore heat, he said.

Nelson said the flood underscores just how urgent relocation is — and not just for his village.

“We can’t predict Mother Nature, and we can’t challenge her,” he said.

Tuntutuliak

Around 30 miles southwest, in Tuntutuliak, the most severe damage came in the low-lying part of town along the banks of Qinaq River. Twenty-six people evacuated, at least a dozen homes were knocked from their foundations, and large sections of boardwalk in the roadless community were ripped away by the storm surge. Elder Henry Lupie said that nearly all of the community’s traditional steam baths were flooded or displaced.

“We need steam house(s). We don’t have bath and showers readily available in homes,” Lupie said.

Lupie said most of the oil-fired heaters in the community have been repaired or replaced. He said the volunteer and agency-led efforts to tear out and replace wet insulation have made multiple homes livable through the winter.

Floodwaters destroyed numerous freezers full of subsistence foods, forcing residents to shift to winter harvests — ice fishing for lush and setting black fish traps, Lupie said. He said his son was among the first residents to harvest a moose under an emergency hunt opened by the state in early November, and that others are waiting for thicker ice to do the same.

“We’re just now cutting it up and passing it to the ones down in the lower village … and the ones from Kwigillingok, evacuees,” Lupie said.

Quinhagak

Further south, the Kuskokwim Bay community of Quinhagak dodged the worst effects of the storm.

“We are fortunate that our community was not devastated and acknowledge that the communities across the bay have a lot more needs than we do,” Mayor Jerilyn Kelly wrote by email.

Nevertheless, Quinhagak saw erosion of as much as 60 feet along miles of beach. The storm surge brought the shoreline closer to the community’s already threatened sewage lagoon. It also destroyed unexcavated portions of a nearby archaeological site, the largest known precontact Yup’ik site in Alaska.

Kelly said that 10 homes were damaged by the storm, and that multiple fish camps, drying racks, smokehouses, and boats were washed away by floodwaters. She said the community’s water intake line is still damaged and will need to be replaced after break-up.

Nightmute

Far to the northwest, at least 19 people evacuated after floodwaters inundated homes in the Nelson Island community of Nightmute, roughly 10 miles up the Toksook River, according to the National Guard. The flooding made the riverside community appear as if it were in the middle of the ocean, said Tribal Administrator Clement George.

A month later, rebuilding work is still underway, he said.

“We’re rebuilding houses, boardwalks are mostly rebuilt, repaired … I think there’s three homes to be demolished,” George said.

George said a contractor has finished constructing a temporary landfill on higher ground after the storm pushed water into the community’s landfill and sewage lagoon.

George said it’s the worst disaster he’s ever experienced. The nearby community of Toksook Bay saw the highest wind gust ever measured on Nelson Island, at 100 miles per hour. George said the level of erosion around Nightmute stands out.

“Some of the tundra is folded and the small creeks, they’re bigger than before,” George said.

At the nearby coastal subsistence camp of Umkumiut, dozens of structures were all but wiped out. The site holds deep cultural importance for many on Nelson Island, and according to George, provides as much as 75% of Nightmute’s subsistence needs.

On Friday morning, about a dozen people pulled items out of their makeshift homes along Teal Street, and packed them into black trash bags or tote boxes.

A dusting of snow had already started settling on the tents and shelters. Police stood on the sidewalk, and volunteers and nonprofit workers passed out eggs and potatoes from a tent nearby. 

Willow Williams sat in a wheelchair across the street from his tent. He has severe health problems: he has a colostomy bag and a hernia, alongside a slew of injuries. A lot of people at the encampment were worried about him, and they came by to bring him food and ask what else he needed, as others helped him pack up his shelter.

“My friend built that place, and he let me move in there, because, you know, it was hard for me with everything,” he said, pointing to his colostomy bag. “And I got a bed in there, and it kept me out of the wind. It kept me away from the rain.” 

Williams said he’s been comfortable there. It’s close to the Glory Hall shelter where he receives help with his health conditions. He said he hopes he’ll get a bed in the shelter soon.

Last year, the city closed a summer campground that unhoused people in Juneau frequently used, and instructed people to camp in small groups on other public land.

This past spring, large groups of tents cropped up in the Teal Street area. And they have been the subject of public debate and safety concerns. The city already cleared the encampment at this spot at least once this year. 

Then in August, because of safety threats to Glory Hall staff and residents, the nearby shelter stopped offering day services. 

Friday morning, the city forced people out of the encampment after giving notice earlier in the week. 

Juneau Police Commander Jeremy Weske was on site, along with several other officers. He said that this encampment isn’t safe in the winter months. 

“We don’t want people being on streets or in ditches and snow plows coming through and having a tragedy,” he said. “So that’s why this is happening now.” 

Smaller groups of people are allowed to camp on what the city calls “unimproved public land,” but officials haven’t offered more concrete guidance. Friday, city officials advised people to go to the city-funded emergency warming shelter in Thane, which only operates overnight.

Williams needs to make it through the next few days, or however long it takes before he can go to the Glory Hall. He said he hasn’t been able to sleep at the emergency warming shelter in the past due to discomfort from his medical issues, but he’s hopeful accommodations have improved.

Director Kaia Quinto said the Glory Hall has been at capacity every night so far this year. 

“Usually when we have somebody move out, there’s like that hour of space where we’re helping them clean and pack up their belongings,” she said. “And then someone else is right in their bed afterwards.”

But she said staff is trying hard to get Williams into the shelter.

“We don’t have any beds,” Quinto said. “But Willow is a high priority for us, to get him in before the weather gets too bad.”

Back on Teal Street, Doug Worthington and his partner Nathaniel Hensley-Williams were strategizing where they could store their stuff, and where to go next. Worthington said they can stay at the Thane warming shelter at night. 

“The other half of the problem is, where are we gonna go during the day?” he said.

“Well, that’s when we just set up our tent during the day and collapse it during the evening,”  Hensley-Williams said. “Because I have thought about that.”

Worthington is from Juneau and said he has been living outside without stable housing for about a year now. 

Initially, people camped here on Teal Street to access the Glory Hall’s day services, but since those stopped, Hensley-Williams said people stay because it feels safer here than other parts of town. 

“Staying here is where we’re not getting f—– with,” he said. “That’s the only reason we have stayed here.”

As an excavator picked up tents and platforms and dropped them in a dump truck, Worthington stood with his and his partner’s stuff, packed into a tower of totes. He said the city isn’t giving his community the help they need. 

“And they say they hate it because they don’t want to be doing this. But yet, here they are,” he said. “They say they want to help us, and yet they’re kicking us out. We’ve all built our homes right here. 

Worthington said he’s been moved around to different parts of the city, but people always complain about people camping, no matter where they go.

Inside a large warehouse past the concessions counter at Bethel’s movie theater, social workers with the Lower Kuskokwim School District (LKSD) tape closed boxes of relief supplies.

“Kasigluk, Kong[iganak], Napaskiak, Tunt[tutuliak], Chefornak, Newtok, Tununak, Toksook [Bay],” said Meghan Crow, the district’s lead social worker, listing off communities where the boxes were headed.

Most of the communities suffered serious damage from the remnants of Typhoon Halong. All have been housing families that were evacuated.

“In the big boxes, we’ve got child sandals, woolen blankets, two boxes each of adult winter coats going out to each site, snack boxes like chips and granola bars and beef jerky, diapers, wipes, formula, bottles,” Crow said.

Crow said even before the storm, one of her key roles for the district was ensuring equal access to educational opportunities for students who have lost housing. With Halong, that number has shot up. More than 130 students have re-enrolled in schools in Bethel and across LKSD.

The dozens of pallets that Crow’s group has broken down for distribution came from thousands of miles away through a Louisiana-based nonprofit, the United Cajun Navy. The district is using federal funds for items it still needs to get students through the winter. Crow says that not only means outdoor gear, but some precious indoor gear as well.

“The next round is basketball shoes everyone’s asking for,” Crow said.

With supplies mostly checked off, Crow said her department’s priority is helping students adjust to their changed reality. Many affected families across the region still need essentials for daily living.

Getting relief to the right place

Standing in a city-owned garage in Bethel, Maggie Coit said there is plenty to go around.

“We have sleeping bags, pads, and for a while we had mattresses, but I believe those all went out yesterday,” Coit said. “That looks like masks, like surgical masks, Clorox wipes here, paper towels, toilet paper, and then what we like to call the leaning tower of diapers.”

Coit is with the veteran-led nonprofit Team Rubicon. She said the garage has filled up and emptied of goods multiple times during the relief effort.

Coit said Team Rubicon has been working closely with the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP) to more precisely meet the needs of communities.

“We work with the requests directly from the villages so that we are not sending goods that are not helpful or extraneous. We really are working to make sure things don’t simply become trash later on,” Coit said.

Robert Rey had also been busy coordinating with an alphabet soup of organizations in Bethel to get relief supplies to the right place.

“Probably left with another what’s out here, plus on the floor, probably another 16,000 pounds of clothes, food, and gear,” Rey said, standing in the center of an airplane hangar owned by a local charter service.

The hangar is being used to store goods that Rey’s employer, Yute Commuter Service, has paid to have freighted into Bethel, so far on its own dime, and distributed to villages. In the hangar, Rey and other volunteers have set up a one-stop shop for anyone in need – among the stockpile, new socks and underwear, piles of sweaters and blankets, canned goods, and bags of pet food.

“It’s not just people that have been affected by the typhoon. It’s also Bethel residents that are hard on their luck. You know, SNAP didn’t get re put up. Some folks are out of jobs. It’s getting cold. They’re freezing out there,” Rey said.

The rebuild effort

The cold weather is an immediate concern for villages hit hardest by the storm. In Bethel, literal tons of building supplies are being sent out as quickly as they arrive.

Alaska Army National Guard Sgt. Matthew Karols has been overseeing logistics at a giant warehouse on the Bethel riverfront. It was long ago a fish processing plant full of Kuskokwim River salmon. Now, it’s filled with the things that it takes to rebuild a village.

“I know we’ve sent out last week, I think it was 560 bundles of insulation. A rough count is about 800 sheets of plywood, and that was just from the one order we had for Napakiak,” Karols said.

Karols makes sure supply orders get where they need to go – first to the Bethel Readiness Center, and then on the flight line at the National Guard Armory to be loaded into Chinook helicopters. Senior Airman Scott Nord has been overseeing that part of the process.

“This is definitely, I don’t know if it’s the appropriate term, but the bottleneck, because everything has to go here before it gets out,” Nord said, standing outside the Guard hangar among giant bundles of plywood known as bunks.

“They can take three bunks in one flight and still have payload to spare. That’s with the crew, and then they’ll throw insulation on top as space permits,” Nord said.

Nord said three to four loads of supplies have been leaving Bethel daily via helicopter. The aim is to have Guard personnel on the ground in four communities at a time assisting with immediate infrastructure needs. He said the level of support, especially from organizations based in Bethel, has stuck with him.

“There’s been a huge turnout from locals that have come to offer time, equipment, and materials of their own to push out to the villages and help where they can,” Nord said. “They’ve shown up out of nowhere and offered their help for exactly what we needed.”

Across the region, homes are being dried out and repositioned, boardwalks pieced back together, and critical infrastructure needed for the winter is being prioritized for repairs. Alongside the Guard, a slew of agencies and vendors have been contracted for the rebuild effort.

A full picture of the amount of state and federal disaster assistance is still unavailable. The state says the effort to calculate the costs of rebuilding and begin processing reimbursements has only begun. From the ground in Bethel one thing is clear: the recovery effort is enormous.

On a sunny afternoon in early August, Atcharee Buntow was running an errand for her mom’s Thai restaurant, topping off their supply of oyster sauce. But when an unmarked vehicle pulled her over on her way home, it became one of the worst days of her life.

A U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent approached her car, and Buntow started taking a video of the encounter on her phone while frantically trying to text her family.

Buntow says she didn’t know what was happening until after the agent put her in handcuffs.

“They did not identify themselves until they had me in custody,” she said in an interview after her release.

Buntow said she was told that she was being detained for overstaying her visa and then taken to a holding facility in Tacoma, Washington. She said she was locked in a dorm with about 60 other women, where it was hard to sleep and meals didn’t come on time.

“Some nights, we didn’t get our dinner till 10:30 p.m., or 11,” she said. “The latest night I ever got dinner was at 2:30 a.m., so I just starved that night.”

She was released on bail about two months later, on Oct. 2.

Buntow, who turns 43 this week, was born in Thailand but has lived in the United States since she was 11. She said she wasn’t aware that there had been any issue with her immigration status, especially after she got married to her first husband, an American citizen.

She’s now married to a different American citizen and is the mother of six American children — four adults and two younger kids. She said the separation was hardest for them.

“My 12-year-old, he was in and out of the hospital for asthma attacks,” Buntow said. “Now that I’m back, he is fine.”

She also has a two-year-old son who relatives say would cry every night she was gone. 

Buntow stayed in touch with family with a tablet she shared with dozens of other women in the detention center. She said those brief calls were one of her only sources of comfort behind bars.

“I was depressed,” Buntow said. “You know, what are they going to do for Thanksgiving? I cook every year. Mac and cheese, sweet potato pie and the green bean casserole. The kids love that.”

Buntow said she feels like her arrest was pretty random. But she’s been convicted of a few nonviolent misdemeanors in Fairbanks over the last couple decades, as well as a felony for fraudulently applying for the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, according to court records.

She pleaded guilty to falsely claiming U.S. citizenship on her PFD application in 2014. Buntow said that was a mistake she made while she was filling out the PFD paperwork for her children. Now, she’s trying to get the conviction vacated so she can stay in Alaska with her family.

Over the last couple months, Buntow’s friends and neighbors, Fairbanks officials, and state legislators advocated for her release. Fairbanksans held a protest in her honor, and her family was able to crowdfund over $20,000 for her bail.

Buntow said the fundraiser remains active to help cover her legal fees while she tries to secure a green card.

Margaret Stock, an Anchorage-based attorney who is recognized for her expertise in immigration law, said she’s seen many people in Alaska face similar situations this year. And that while the Trump administration insists ICE agents are only picking up the worst of the worst, she sees a lot of collateral damage.

“What I’m seeing are a lot of people being picked up who don’t have a criminal record,” Stock said. “Or it’s something really minor, like they had an encounter with the police, but no charges were filed. In some cases, they’re picking up U.S. citizens.”

Stock said she’s even working with an Alaska military veteran to fight deportation proceedings. She said the majority of people she sees ICE detaining are eligible for a green card, and that she believes ICE is putting pressure on them to leave the country by putting them in detention centers.

But those proceedings can take years. And Stock said legal resources are stretched thin, especially in Alaska.

“It’s pretty hard to find help,” she said. “I mean, there are a few private lawyers, but we’re strapped thin. Right now, the immigration judges have more than 4,000 cases per judge. Getting a hearing with the judge can take a really long time, and you have to comply with a lot of technical rules, so it’s really difficult if you don’t have an attorney.”

That’s the route Buntow is trying to take. Buntow said she’s cautiously hopeful she won’t be deported to Thailand, which doesn’t feel like home anymore.

“I don’t know anything over there,” she said. “I’ve been living here all my life. Where would I live? Where would I go? What will I do without my kids, my husband? I’m happy that I’m back, I’m just scared of what’s going to happen next.”

Her husband, an American citizen who has never left the country before, is preparing to start his life over with her abroad if their worst fears come to pass.

Buntow remains grateful for the time she has with her family and the chance to celebrate her birthday and the holidays together. But her thoughts remain with the other mothers she befriended in the Tacoma detention center.

Buntow is still in touch with a fellow detainee named Paula, an immigrant from the Philippines who was born in Cambodia.

“I just heard Paula got sent to Louisiana, which is worse than Tacoma,” Buntow said. “She has eight children. She’s been in there for 18 months, and her immigration case is over. She was trying to appeal it, and they denied her appeal. I really feel very bad for her. Like, I cried when she told me her story.”

ICE did not respond to interview requests before press time.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed an extension of the state’s disaster declaration on Saturday to continue emergency response and recovery efforts following the Western Alaska storms, including the remnants of Typhoon Halong.

The original disaster declaration signed on Oct. 9 was set to expire on Sunday.

“The 30-day extension will enable recovery efforts to continue unencumbered so that the maximized amount of work can be completed before the onset of the winter freeze up in the region,” according to a statement from the governor’s office.

The governor requested concurrence from leaders of the Alaska State Legislature and was met with support.

“I am in complete agreement on the 30 day extension and appreciate the Governor’s amended Disaster Declaration,” said Alaska State Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, in a statement.

“It’s been a yeoman’s job by everyone, and I’m very impressed by the dedication and the amount of time put in,” said Alaska Speaker of the House Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham.

He said the extension is necessary. “It just makes good sense,” he said. “In a race with freeze-up and making as much progress as possible to get local residents back in their homes, if that is possible, in this very short amount of time that’s available.”

The disaster recovery effort on the Western Alaska coast is still underway, almost a month after a series of fall storms damaged or devastated coastal villages and displaced thousands of residents, primarily in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region. Recovery operations are focused on restoring critical infrastructure, including water, power, communications, and emergency home and boardwalk repairs, according to an update on Friday from the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

The state’s disaster response effort is coordinating with federal agencies, regional tribal organizations, non-profits and local partners. The Trump administration announced a federal disaster declaration for Alaska on Oct. 22, promising a 100 percent cost share for the state’s relief efforts for 90 days, through January, according to the governor’s office.

The Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management did not respond to a request for a cost estimate of the disaster relief effort to date, on Monday.

As of Friday, the most recent division update, the state has received 1,400 applications for state Individual Assistance and 719 applications for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Applications are still open.