Officer in this week’s Anchorage police shooting was also involved in fatal May shooting

One of the Anchorage police officers who shot at a man earlier this week was also involved in a fatal police shooting in May, the department said Thursday.

Police identified Brandon Stack and Jacob Jones as the officers who shot at and seriously wounded 51-year-old Damien Dollison in an East Anchorage parking lot early Monday. Dollison fired at officers first, police said.

On May 13, Jones was also one of four officers responding to a disturbance at a West Anchorage apartment complex who shot at 34-year-old Kristopher Handy, who died at the scene. Surveillance footage from a nearby apartment circulated online and raised questions about the police’s description of what happened. The department said he “raised a long gun” at officers, but it is not clear from the video whether he raised a weapon.

Jones was hired in December 2016, and Stack was hired in June 2017. Both officers work with the department’s K-9 unit.

APD Chief Sean Case said Thursday that he expects the public will have concerns about a single officer being involved in two shootings.

“For an officer to be involved in two incidents, significant incidents like this, I always have concern for just their welfare and mental health,” he said. “It’s a tough thing to go through to be involved in two traumatic incidents like that in a short period of time. ... From an administrative perspective, we do our due diligence and review all issues to make sure that all the actions of conduct are appropriate.”

Dollison is the fifth person Anchorage officers have shot since mid-May. Three people have died and Dollison and another man were wounded in the police shootings. Case described the string of shootings as an anomaly and said there are, on average, three police shootings each year.

On Monday, Jones and Stack were responding to a report of a shot fired outside the Circle K fuel station on the 1400 block of Bragaw Street when they encountered Dollison around 3:30 a.m., Case said.

Dollison and another man had been involved in an argument outside the station that led to them both pointing guns at each other, Case said. Dollison eventually fired a shot at the man and left the area, according to a criminal complaint filed against him. They did not know each other.

He was in a nearby parking lot when Stack and Jones confronted him, the complaint said. He fired at them and was subsequently shot twice by police, Case said.

Dollison is facing three third-degree assault charges.

By Thursday, investigators had conducted interviews and reviewed video footage of the shooting, Case said. It is not clear when body-camera footage of the shooting will be publicly released.

The department has faced mounting public pressure to release footage of shootings since Handy’s death in May. Officials have not released footage and the previous police chief cited concerns that doing so could interfere with the Office of Special Prosecutions’ investigation, which determines whether officers should face criminal charges.

Case — who took over as police chief July 1, the day Mayor Suzanne LaFrance took office — said he drafted a new version of the department’s policy that will provide a timeline for when footage is released. He has not yet provided details about the timeline but said the policy will be released in about a week.

Three Anchorage Assembly members plan to introduce an ordinance and a resolution at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting that address body-camera footage. The resolution calls for all footage of the recent shootings to be released 30 days after it is passed; allows for the Handy family to view the footage in advance; and urges the department to reconsider its policy.

The proposed ordinance would put a requirement for body-camera use into municipal code and establish standards for storage, review and release of footage. A public hearing is scheduled for July 30.

Case said Thursday that the Assembly members’ proposals “reflect some of the desires of the community and some members of the community that had a vocal voice. I think they’re great suggestions.”

[Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Brandon Stack’s last name in multiple references.]