Candidate for governor talks crime at forum

Republican governor candidate Mike Dunleavy got an earful at his campaign’s forum on crime Wednesday at Anchorage’s Loussac Library.

It was Dunleavy’s second crime forum, which he said were listening sessions, after an event held earlier in Juneau. Rick Rydell, a local conservative radio show host, moderated the event.

To listen to the anecdotes, Anchorage would seem a city awash in criminal activity, with police and prosecutors of little help.

“I won’t walk out to my mailbox without my sidearm any more,” one person in the audience told Dunleavy, who was taking notes.

Another said she was afraid to go to her local supermarket after dark. There were tales of cars being stolen, recovered, cleaned up and repaired, and then stolen again.

One woman recounted a story of a woman high on heroin driving a red car around Muldoon trying to coax elementary school children into her car. Police never found the car, or the driver, a woman recounting the story said. How she know the woman was high on heroin wasn’t explained.

Dunleavy explained the session was for him to listen. Solutions will be discussed at another crime forum planned Oct. 13 in Anchorage, he said.

That didn’t stop people in the audience from pressing Dunleavy, however. One person, a prosecutor for the Municipality of Anchorage and a former state prosecutor, painted a dismal image of a demoralized state Department of Law with skilled young attorneys who were just overwhelmed.

“We have a lot of people who are just overworked and past their limits. What changes can you make for the Department of Law? What will you do to help?” she asked.

Dunleavy was sympathetic but demurred on explicit commitment. But earlier in the session he said that it will take more resources, meaning larger budgets, to address the problem. “It will cost. It will take resources. We can’t turn this around without putting more resources in,” he told the audience.

In this comment, Dunleavy is showing a more moderate position on budgets than he took when was a state senator and had advocated massive budget cuts.

What has contributed to the crime wave is a shortage of funds for prosecutors, the courts and state troopers due to large budget cuts made by the Legislature after oil revenues plunged in 2015.

Dunleavy was in the Legislature during that time and a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

A contribution factor to the crime wave, in Anchorage at least, was a wave of retirements in the Anchorage Police Department which left the city rushing to recruit for vacant positions just as the drug and crime was worsening.

Many in the audience were supportive of paying more for protection. “Who wouldn’t pay a little more for safety?” one man asked. “Where do I write my check?” It was an implicit endorsement of higher taxes to support public safety.

Dunleavy was also scolded, although gently, for slow-rolling a high-profile change in education curriculums, known as “Bree’s Law,” to make middle and high school children more aware of dating violence. The bill was pushed after 20-year-old Bree Moore was killed in 2014 in an act of dating violence.

The bill was in the state Senate and Dunleavy, who chaired the education committee at the time, was sitting on it, Bree’s father, Butch Moore, said at the Wednesday forum. The bill eventually passed with wide support, but is not being implemented correctly.

“We want your support,” to make sure the education of children is done correctly, Moore told Dunleavy.

Dunleavy assured him of his support. “Sometimes when bills pass there are unintended consequences. I want to sit down with you and work out the details,” Dunleavy told Moore, who was sitting beside his wife Cindy, Bree’s mother.

Some of the stories told Wednesday were of heart-rending personal tragedy, such as one woman who recounted a savage attack by a mentally-ill person that left her seriously wounded, and followed sometime later by the murder of her son outside an Anchorage drinking establishment.

Her complaint is on how slow the wheel of justice is turning. “I’ve been waiting for the trial (of her son’s alleged shooter) for the last two years, and every three months I’m told it’s been postponed again,” she told Dunleavy. Also, the man who gave the gun to the person alleged to have shot her son was not charged by police, she said.

Also, she feels the 20-year maximum sentence given for this kind of crime is too lenient. “Killing a police officer gets a 99-year sentence, and since that change was made there’s been a sharp drop in attacks on police. Shouldn’t this kind of killing (of her son) get the same?”

“Absolutely. My goal is safe streets,” Dunleavy said.

Another complaint was of being mugged and take-out food stolen outside a Thai restaurant. “If the person told me he needed something to eat I would have helped him. Instead, he just took my dinner,” the person said.

Many complaints were of inaction by police, who say they are overwhelmed. One man had his jet ski stolen. When he called the police, “they told me three things. One is that I’m never going to get my jet ski back; two, that they (police) know who’s doing this, and three, that they (criminals) target people like me,” he told Dunleavy.

“That makes it sound like I’m the guilty guy for having a jet ski. Crime really affects everyone, and this just makes me feel stripped of humanity,” he said.

Police also repeatedly caution people to not leave vehicles running unattended, or keys in the vehicles, or unlocked doors at home.

Another person, a long-time Anchorage resident, said his son had his cell phone taken in south Anchorage outside a popular, well-lit fast-food restaurant, early on a Saturday evening after a gun was pointed at him. Shortly after they saw notices on the internet of the phone for sale.

One mother is worried about what her children see on the streets. “I was taking my daughter to an early pre-school class, in Muldoon, and we stopped to pick up some food (at a fast-food restaurant). My daughter saw someone shooting up with heroin,” she said.

There was support in the Wednesday forum for a repeal of Senate Bill 91, a state law passed in 2016 that made reforms in criminal laws including pre-trial procedures and inmate rehabilitation.

Many blame the law for the crime wave, although criminal activity was surging before the law passed. Dunleavy said some of the problems in SB 91 were corrected by another law passed the next year, SB 54. The Legislature also passed HB 312 this year, making other corrective changes to SB 91.

Dunleavy said more needs to be done, however.

“We need to have the courts operating more than four days a week,” Dunleavy said, referring to court system’s move from five days a week to four to reduce spending.

State Rep. Matt Claman, D-Anch., who chairs the House Judiciary Committee in the current Legislature, wasn’t at Dunleavy’s crime forum but in a separate interview said the public seems willing to pay more for public protection.

“We added money to the budget for state prosecutors and troopers last session and we got no complaints. People seem willing to maintain and even increase funding,” he said.

Claman said what is really fueling the crime wave is the rising tide of drug use. That began with increased abuse of opioids in 2010 and gathering momentum through 2012 and 2013, which was before SB 91 was passed, Claman said.

Crime is still increasing, however.

The state Department of Law is reporting increased misdemeanor and felony charges over the last two years despite the efforts or police and prosecutors, Claman said.

“This is a complex issue. We have a long road in front of us,” he said.