Mayor Begich remarks
Downtown Rotary
Noon; Oct. 17, 2006; Hilton Chart Room

Thanks, Jim Posey. It’s always a pleasure to speak to the Downtown Rotary, where I am an honorary but only occasional attendee.

I was last here to speak with you in May for a preview of this year’s road construction season. I know we all enjoyed the summer dodging road construction sites.

Today I wanted to discuss another subject near and dear to everyone here – public safety. I’ll talk about what we’re doing to improve it, offer some innovative proposals designed to deal with specific problems and identify a few roadblocks we need some help on.
I realize my speech was billed some months ago as a budget update. But as Ken Stout can verify, this year’s budget process is moving along without a lot of controversy.

In fact, it comes with some very good news. The budget I proposed to the Assembly calls for $44 million worth of property tax relief next year. For the average homeowner, this means a savings of about 420-dollars.

This is largely the result of the Legislature responding to the plea of Alaska’s communities for a share of the state’s resource wealth.

The budget proposes no major increases or decreases. And it includes a significant reduction in the amount of property taxes required to finance it. The percentage of property taxes funding the city budget drops to 44 percent in the coming year, down from 59 percent when I took office.

 If you want to express yourself on the budget, the Assembly has set two public hearings – tonight and October 24th. It’s scheduled to approve the budget on an appropriate evening - Halloween.

 Let me turn to the topic at hand – public safety. Since Day One in this job, improving the safety of Anchorage residents has been at the top of my to-do list.

 You’ll remember that shortly after I became mayor, we ordered up an internal review of the Police Department. We found APD 93 officers short of where it should be for a department of this size and responsibility.

 The department simply lacked the people – both sworn officers and clerical staff - to adequately meet the expectations of our community.

 Since then, we’ve embarked on an aggressive hiring effort. We’ve held numerous training academies.
We’ve beat the bushes – in Alaska and the Lower 48 – for promising recruits. We’ve encouraged veteran officers to postpone retirement.

 The result is we’re nearly half-way toward our goal – a net gain of 42 officers. That hasn’t been easy in tight budget times, so I thank the Assembly for their support.

We’re making progress on other goals, too. The number of minorities in the department has grown 13 percent and the number of women is up 7 percent.

 More officers on the streets are having an effect. Response times are better and the number of arrests are growing – just under 16,000 last year. Even more important, the number of felony arrests is at all-time high - up 12 percent in 2005.

With new officers, we were able to re-assemble the traffic unit which had been dismantled several years ago. The result: fatalities down 50 percent and accidents down 20 percent since 2004.

We also launched five-part anti-gang initiative in June 2005. Anchorage had a special APD gang unit years ago, but dissolved it when the problem seemed to wane.

But as we’ve all witnessed, Anchorage has seen a rise in youth and gang violence over the past couple of years. This is part of a national trend, and we’re no exception.

Police are doing their part fighting gangs.

In the past year, our special APD anti-gang unit has arrested 121 people on 101 state felony charges, six federal charges and 70 misdemeanor charges. They’ve confiscated 63 guns and seized 22 batches of drugs.

Chief Monegan did an excellent job overseeing these initiatives. When he retired, we brought in a new team at APD and restructured top management.

I’m pleased to introduce the new chief, now in his third week on the job - Rob Heun. Chief Heun is a West Point grad and 23-year APD veteran who has paid his dues in about every facet of the department.

Making our community safe is not just a police responsibility. It’s a community responsibility.

That’s why earlier this year I appointed a Community Youth Violence Gang Response Team. These 11 citizens – educators, professionals in the field, religious and civic leaders, a state legislator, police officer and former gang member – spent six months looking at the root of the problem and potential solutions.

We’re working to implement many of their 10 recommendations now. Those range from changing the way students are expelled from school to centralizing information for families and youth at-risk.

Another of their recommendations was a high-profile gang summit. I’m pleased to announce that in cooperation with the U.S. Attorney’s office, we will do exactly that on November 15th at the Marriott Hotel.

It will be co-sponsored by the Tri-Borough Commission: the mayors of Anchorage and the Mat-Su and Kenai Peninsula Boroughs. The summit will focus on designing a regional and statewide strategy for combating gangs.

Another initiative with the U.S. Attorney is hiring two city prosecutors to be assigned to the federal prosecutor’s office to focus on three issues: gangs, guns and drugs. The benefit of the federal system is mandatory minimums, which means these criminals get sent away for a long time to federal prisons far from Alaska.

We sought both state and federal funds for this, and received a $100,000 federal grant which we’re using to supplement city taxpayer dollars. We’ve hired the two prosecutors. They are now undergoing extensive federal background checks before they can start work, which we hope is in the next few weeks.

I’d like to introduce our point-person overseeing this initiative, city Prosecutor John McConnaughy.

I also was pleased a material witness bill passed in the special session this past summer. Long a priority of ours, this new law allows police to get names and contact information for witnesses at certain felony crime scenes.

Hopefully, it will prevent what happened at the infamous Dimond Mall shooting last year – when witnesses flipped off the cops and drove away.

Despite all these efforts, we – and I know you – continue to be frustrated by high-profile gang crimes and youth violence.

The latest was on Primary Day when two gang-bangers shot at each other from their cars driving down Northern Lights. No sooner did the police arrest them, they posted bail and were back on the streets, only to fire 26 more bullets at the car of their original intended victim.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. An increasing number of police are bringing an increasing number of cases to the State criminal justice system.

Yet, too many of these cases are not being processed in a timely manner, resulting in delays, inadequate sentences and defendants committing more crime while awaiting trial.
This only worsens Anchorage’s gang problem.

According to the Anchorage District Attorney’s Office, there are more than 1,600 felony cases currently awaiting disposition by the State. At the same time, the number of felony trials held in Anchorage has dropped dramatically, from nearly 140 in 1986 to about 30 in 2004.

Some murder cases awaiting trial date back seven years. As of January, there were nearly 300 felony trials pending in Anchorage, including 28 homicides.

 The reasons for this backlog are complicated and numerous. Alaska’s jails are seriously over-crowded. Just yesterday, the Anchorage Complex was 100 inmates over its emergency level of 416.

 The Legislature this year did add judges in Anchorage, Palmer, Fairbanks and Kenai. But it failed to fund the additional elements needed to make the entire State criminal justice system work properly – especially additional public defenders and prosecutors.

 I’ve been meeting for months with all the players involved. Based on their suggestions and our own experience, today I want to propose some new initiatives we believe will improve the public’s safety.

 First, unclog the court backlog. The Legislature and new administration have to step up with the resources we need to process these cases in a timely manner and get these criminals off our streets.

 I’ve met with all three candidates for governor to make this point in no uncertain terms.

 Second, better use technology.  Today, the court system and APD cannot electronically share some kinds of data about criminal defendants, such as bail status. This means when an officer encounters a violator on the street, the officer may not know whether that person is out on bail or has committed other crimes.

Numerous other jurisdictions like Arizona, Wisconsin and Chicago, have state-of-the-art systems for sharing such information. So should we.

Another great technology I’d recommend is ankle bracelets for gang members. Gang-bangers present unique threats to the public because they often ignore probation and parole restrictions and frequently commit other crimes while awaiting disposition of their cases.

Let’s pass a state law which says these gang members must wear ankle bracelets as a condition of their release or parole. Removal of the bracelet would automatically send them back to jail.
Third, we need stricter penalties for multiple traffic violations. In several high-profile cases recently, drivers who have previously been convicted of traffic violations receive only light punishment, and then go on to commit serious crimes, including murder.

Remember last February when Mark Elkins was sentenced for a wreck that killed an Anchorage mother, Gail Fejes. Elkins, who was 24 at the time, had received at least 16 tickets since age 16, yet was never seriously punished by the criminal justice system.

Anchorage’s top three traffic violators together have 178 unpaid citations. Number One on that illustrious list also has 14 arrests for crimes from reckless driving to assault. All three are still on the streets.

Let’s look at stricter State laws, perhaps modeled after “three strikes” laws in which drivers with long histories of multiple traffic violations face felonies. These drivers should be removed from the streets before they kill innocent victims.

Fourth is something we’re starting to do internally at the city – better coordinating zoning and crime trends. Today, both APD and our zoning enforcement department maintain a list of “trouble spots” where criminal activity may occur. But this information is not routinely shared.

Earlier this year in Chugiak, APD discovered a large fencing operation of stolen construction materials. Zoning enforcement had been aware of problems at the site, but had not shared the info with APD.

We’re improving our systems so zoning enforcement will develop a list of “top 10 trouble spots” and share this with the police.

Fifth, we need better overall coordination among law enforcement agencies, as well as those involved in prevention and intervention. We’re looking right now at model programs in San Diego and Fresno which have well coordinated anti-gang and youth violence operations. My plan is to introduce a city ordinance to formalize how to deal with these problems.
 
In closing, let me reiterate a point I made earlier. Gang and youth violence isn’t just a police responsibility. It’s the responsibility of all of us. Civic groups like this one, the faith community and individual Anchorage residents do great work every day to make our community a better place.

I appeal to you to redouble your efforts to help guide our young people toward productive lives. Only in this way can our city and state live up to its full enormous potential. Thank you.

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