Taxidermist indicted for assault, coercion

Unnamed Palmer police officer shot man at his home during Sept. 21 confrontation

Oct. 11, 2005

MARY AMES\Frontiersman reporter

ANCHORAGE - An Anchorage grand jury last Thursday indicted a Palmer taxidermist shot almost three weeks ago by a Palmer police officer trying to serve warrants. The indictments returned Oct. 6 include five third-degree assault charges and one charge of coercion.

Shawn McCrary, 42, held four Palmer police officers and one Alaska State Trooper at bay when they arrived to serve arrest and search warrants Sept. 21, according to the indictment.

Palmer Police Chief George Boatright, Sgt. Lance Ketterling, Officers James Gipson and Philip Krauss arrived at McCrary'sSouth Gulkana Streetresidence with Trooper Sgt. Bob Cox, according to court papers.

McCrary refused to put down a handgun when officers arrived, according to a press release issued by Palmer police the day after the shooting. That press release said the standoff lasted about a half hour while McCrary threatened suicide and a police negotiator tried to resolve the situation. The press release stated that McCrary made a &#8221sudden threatening movement“ and a Palmer police officer fired his handgun and shot McCrary.

The day after the shooting, Boatright said that because both state troopers and Palmer police were on scene, the Anchorage Police Department would investigate.

A Palmer police officer had not fired a gun in the line of duty since Officer James Rowland Jr. was killed in the Carrs parking lot in May 1999, he said.

Boatright said the Anchorage district attorney would look into the matter and that he hoped it would be resolved shortly.

James Fayette, chief of the Special Prosecutions Unit for the Department of Law in Anchorage, presented the case to the grand jury and will be trying the case in Palmer.

&#8221My office frequently screens and considers cases when force is used against or by police officers,“ Fayette said. &#8221In a case like that, the local district attorney will be second-guessed by everyone. Whether the DA is hard on the perpetrator or the cops, it's a lose-lose situation.“

The coercion charge was filed, Fayette said, because it is possible to use the statute to prosecute people whose action or inaction forces another person to do something. For example, by refusing to put down a gun, a person forces others to respond in a certain way, he said.

All the information, such as the names of the officers involved, were secret until the grand jury handed up the indictments, Fayette said, so that may be why no more information was released by the Palmer police.

&#8221It's not something sinister,“ he said.

The September clash with police was apparently McCrary's second.

According to an article in Aug. 21, 1991 Frontiersman, McCrary barricaded himself in his Fairview Loop home when troopers came to take him into custody on misdemeanor warrants. From about 7:30 a.m. one day until about noon the next, McCrary kept officers at bay with a shotgun.

Medics and special emergency reaction team units stood by until McCrary came out. No one was hurt at that time.

McCrary arrived at Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on Oct. 9 and remains in custody. The warrants the officers were trying to serve in September were for violation of a restraining order, trespass and reckless endangerment, all misdemeanors.

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.