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This article was written for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in collaboration with the Anchorage Daily News. Subscribe to Dispatches to get stories like this as soon as they’re published.
Alaska officials announced plans to help Anchorage city prosecutors try criminal cases days after the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported that the municipality had dropped hundreds of cases due to low staffing.
Generally, the city prosecutes misdemeanors committed within the city limits, while the state prosecutes crimes. In the next six months, the two governments plan to work together to curb the wave of layoffs. Assistant Attorney General John Skidmore said Tuesday that his department will provide seven to 10 state attorneys to support city government.
Those prosecutors add to the 13 people the city said were on staff as of last week.
“Public safety is one of the primary goals of any government,” Skidmore said in a written statement. “The Law Department is not staffed to handle all misdemeanor prosecutions in Anchorage, but we are working to protect the public as best we can while the municipal prosecutor’s office recovers.”
“A lot of our prosecutors live in Anchorage, so for a lot of us, it’s our community,” he said.
The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported that between May 1 and Oct. 2, the Anchorage municipal attorney’s office dismissed more than 930 misdemeanor criminal charges because the state’s 120-day deadline to bring defendants to trial had expired or was about to expire. This number has now exceeded 1,000 cases.
The cases also included defendants accused of domestic violence, child abuse and drunken driving.
According to city officials, employee turnover and layoffs have left the municipality without enough lawyers. In order to clear this year’s case backlog, judges have forced prosecutors to regularly review which cases are ready for trial within 120 days, and prosecutors have been routinely understaffed to move forward in a timely manner.
Anchorage City Attorney Eva Gardner previously said the city applied for help from the state back in April, during the administration of then-Mayor Dave Bronson, but was denied. Skidmore said city officials did not specifically ask for help at the April meeting.
Gardner, who began working for the city in July under new Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, said that when she learned of the apparent misunderstanding, she called Skidmore, and city and state attorneys met on Oct. 8 to discuss possible solutions.
“The state is willing to help, and it’s just a matter of figuring out the best way to do it,” he said.
Along with dismissals through Oct. 9, the municipality has dismissed at least 279 domestic violence and 313 drunk driving cases since May 1 because it could not meet speedy trial deadlines, according to a review of court records by news organizations.
Skidmore said the state is looking to loan lawyers from the Special Prosecutor’s Office and the Anchorage District Attorney’s Office, as well as some former prosecutors who work in the Justice Department’s civil division.
The city has already worked to recruit new prosecutors and offered additional pay this year, and city officials say those efforts are starting to pay off.
Gardner said that after the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica revealed the mass layoffs on Oct. 13, he also heard from retired prosecutors who expressed interest in helping new municipal attorneys try cases. The city is also investigating this possibility, he said.