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Leaders in Alaska and other places have repeatedly promised in recent years the actions of the chronic inability of the nation to resolve the murder or disappearance of indigenous residents.
Federal legislation supported by Alaska Lisa Murkovsky’s Senator, called for improving data from law enforcement and tribes. Told Governor Mike Dunliv again and again and as Recently May 5 That the state government will work with natives from Alaska to address the crisis.
“My administration will still support law enforcement agencies, victims, Alaska’s native tribes and other entities working together to solve these affairs and attract the closure of victims,” Dunlivi said last year.
However, when the Alaska native group asked in June the state bodies of law enforcement agencies on one of the most basic data needed to understand the issue – the list of murders investigated by the state police – the state stated that “no”.
Charlene Akpik Apok launched Data by the indigenous justice In 2020, after trying to gather the names of the missing and killed by indigenous reading at the rally, just found that no government agency was monitored. Over time, the non -profit organization built its own base of houses with the help of village, friends and family across the state.
In 2023, the state began to publish a list of quarterly names of indigenous residents who were reported missing. But the state still does not issue a list for other key efforts of the group: indigenous people who were killed.
Thus, on June 4, the non -profit organization submitted two requests for public safety public safety, which has been investigated since 2022 by the agency. The group first asked the victims of all races, and then for those who decided as a native of Alaska.
Apok said she did not believe that the request was controversial or difficult.
But the state rejected the requests in a week. Agency said the request will take “a few hours” and quoted State regulation The refusal to provide information will be required from the staff of the “compilation or generalization” of existing state records.
“We do not conduct lists of victims of any type of crime, including the victims of the killings, and to execute this DPS request, you will have to review the incidents from a few years to create a record that you are looking for what you are looking for,” Austin McDaniel wrote, a communications director.
McDaniel did not suggest a direct answer when Anchorage Daily News and Propublica asked why the agency could not receive a murder record with a simple database request or why, even if the work requires manually and is not required according to state legislation, the agency did not just create a list of victims.
(Alaska’s public reports say that any entries receiving civil servants, less than five hours for production must be provided free of charge, and the state may choose a refusal for research if providing records will serve public interests. Even if the agency needs to create a new entry, as McDaniel claimed to be a refusal. Function “.
Indigenous justice data appealed against the refusal of the Department’s Head, Public Security Commissioner James Kaklola, who decided in favor of the agency.
The request of non -profit records and the refusal of the state showed that four years after the creation of the Council on the slaughter and the disappeared indigenous residents of Alaska could not easily identify cases of killings related to the victims of indigenous residents. There are now four investigators in the state, which focus on such cases.
“How do they know what cases are native to Alaska or indigenous people for their MMIP investigators when they can’t make the demographics we talk about?” Apok said.
Apok said that tracking complete and accurate indigenous people who have disappeared or killed, as otherwise law enforcement may refuse individual cases and refuse the problem.
“This is the data force. It is the power of collective information,” she said.
Credit:
Mark Leester/ADN
Instead of answering detailed questions on this story, McDaniel answered one page stating that the department receives thousands of requests annually. He said the agency was a “leader through the transparency of data” for the missing and killed indigenous residents, adding that “it follows that we do not put in this work from the refusal in one request from the propaganda group.”
He referred to the examples of transparency of the publication of the information about the missing indigenous residents and its provision of law enforcement to tribal governments in support of their requests for federal grants.
Ancoridge, which manages the largest state police department, Recently turned A policy that kept the persons of some victims of the murder. The police chief posted the records after daily reporting It was found that the policy was not reasoned in the law And she opposed the supporters of the victims.
Meanwhile, state paratroopers handle about 38% of all killings in Alaska, according to statistics, which law enforcement agencies reports every year. From 2019 to 2023, the most recent data, paratroopers investigated 22 killings each year. This means that the agency will probably need only a few dozen reports to provide the requested names.
Reports on watershed Posted in Canada In 2017 and on the basis of Seattle The city Institute of Health of India In 2018, the sphere of the crisis of the missing and killed people from the indigenous communities was revealed.
These reports, Apoc, said: “Named exactly what many of us saw and feel where we did not know that our experience was part of a greater team.”
In 2021, the data on indigenous justice published the first report on the crisis in Alaska, emphasizing the failure of the media and local authorities to collect data on cases of missing and killed people for analysis of models. A council appointed even Dunlevi relied on the conclusions of Apok – Including her conclusion that little data is available – when trying to describe the problem.
Dunlevi and Murkovsky dealt with the problem in this matter.
The governor’s spokesman did not answer the questions on the e-mail and manually about the state’s refusal to provide the victims of the Apok group. The decision to not release the names, Murkovsky’s office stated that the senator was unavailable for the interview and offered no commentary on the state’s actions.
Apok said her group would continue to make requests for public records in the state, building her own database through community ties.
“We will continue to do what we are doing,” she said. “People will continue to tell us the names.”
