State prosecutors have declined to file charges against the Anchorage police officers who shot and killed an armed man after a domestic dispute in May.
The case drew calls for better police accountability after a video surfaced that contradicted officers’ account of the moments before the shooting.
Officers’ shooting of 34-year-old Kristopher Handy outside a Sand Lake apartment complex May 13 also prompted a routine investigation by the state Office of Special Prosecutions, which released its findings Wednesday morning. The public release of the investigation findings, which were included in a letter to Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case dated Friday, came Wednesday shortly before Anchorage police held a news conference releasing officers’ body camera footage of the incident.
In the 21-page letter, Senior Assistant Attorney General John Darnall includes previously unreleased information on the events leading up to the shooting, as well as imagery of Handy from a police car’s dashboard camera just before he was shot.
Darnall’s decision means Sgt. Noel Senoran and Officers Jacob Jones, Jacob Ostolaza and James Stineman will not be charged in the shooting. Per department policy, Chief Case said Anchorage police would be conducting their own investigation of the officers’ conduct, but that process is considered a confidential personnel matter.
Police say the call that led to Handy’s death started out simply: a disturbance between a man and a woman, reported to dispatchers at about 2:15 a.m. on May 13.
But as officers headed to the apartment complex on Bearfoot Drive, off Northwood Street near Strawberry Road, dispatchers told them that the man – later identified as Handy – had left the building carrying a long gun.
As officers arrived, they split up into two teams and approached the building.
The Office of Special Prosecutions report notes that officers used a public address system on a police vehicle to repeatedly order Handy out of the apartment with his hands up, and to drop his weapon. Handy ignored the commands and strode toward the officers, shotgun in hand.
An APD statement – read verbatim to reporters by then-Chief Designee Bianca Cross at a news conference just hours later – had at least two significant discrepancies with the OSP report.
“As they advanced towards the apartment complex on foot, the adult male raised a long gun towards the officers,” police said. “Four officers discharged their weapons, striking the adult male at least once in the upper body.”
Cross confirmed that the officers involved in the shooting had been wearing body cameras. Police didn’t immediately release their video, the first such footage of a fatal shooting by Anchorage police since officers started to be outfitted with body cameras late last year, as the state conducted its investigation.But the public got a first look at the shooting days later from a doorbell camera at another apartment in the Bearfoot Drive complex. That footage never shows Handy raising his gun at officers. State investigators also concluded the claim that Handy pointed the shotgun at police “is not borne out by a review of the available video footage.”
According to Darnall’s letter, Handy’s girlfriend later told police he had an argument with his mother, then got a shotgun and started drinking. She said that she had tried to talk Handy down, but that he said, “No, screw it, I want you to watch when they mow me down.” She said Handy had taken off his shirt and stepped outside “screaming and hollering” as he awaited police. She had just convinced him to come inside when police responded.
When police arrived at the apartment complex, Darnall said, Handy came “charging” out of an upstairs apartment onto an exterior walkway with a pistol-grip, short-barrel shotgun.
“Handy raised this shotgun straight in the air above his head and yelled (an expletive) at the officers,” Darnall said in the letter.
Darnall said Handy then moved “rapidly and purposefully” along the walkway and down a set of stairs, at one point facing other officers who were trying to flank his position.
“Handy quickly turned towards the officers who were stationed in and near the patrol vehicles while holding the shotgun,” Darnall said. “Handy stepped forward off the sidewalk and into the parking lot, and at that moment, multiple APD officers fired shots.”
Darnall said Handy dropped his gun after he was shot. Officers and medics performed first aid on Handy, but police said he died at the scene. An autopsy determined he had been struck 10 times in the shooting and that he had a very high blood-alcohol content and an antidepressant in his system.
Handy’s mother, who arrived at the scene after he was shot, told officers he “had been making suicide threats and telling family members goodbye” the previous day. She also said he had recently suffered a head injury at work and “has not been the same.”
Darnall found that the investigation “generally corroborated officers’ accounts of the events.” He also determined that the officers were justified under state law in using deadly force against Handy, because they believed he posed a threat to their lives.
Chief Case said at the Wednesday press conference that, beyond the criminal and administrative processes for the individual officers, the department will take a wider look at these incidents to inform their training and tactics.
“20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing. We can look at this from the perspective of, we have all the time in the world to make these decisions, which is not the position the officers are in,” Case said. “And it allows us to look at our training and how our training impacts our performance on the street and what our tactical approaches to these are. And it’s important for us as we move forward that we take those two things into consideration so we can do everything we can do to reduce lethal force encounters.”
The department released a summary and compilation of recordings of the incident Wednesday afternoon on its website.