MMIW Cases (Alaska State Troopers)

The Department of Public Safety has received your Request for Public Information. Your request will be reviewed and then assigned for processing. You will be contacted prior to your request being completed if any charges will be incurred.
Request number 16205 has been assigned for this request. Please use this number for correspondence.
Alaska Administrative Code 2 AAC 96.325 requires that responses to requests be made within ten working days of receipt of request. The regulation further provides that the ten working day deadline can be extended an additional ten working days provided notice is given to the requester that additional time is needed. In situations where the regulatory time deadline cannot be met, the requester is to be contacted and advised of response efforts.
Please do not reply to this e-mail, it is sent to an unmonitored account. For questions or to submit additional information or documents, please e-mail
dps.publicinforequest@alaska.gov. (mailto:dps.publicinforequest@alaska.gov)

Good morning Ms. Lucchesi,

I received your public information request for:

Data on all cases of: unsolved missing persons, homicides, suspicious deaths, and deaths in custody involving an Alaska Native/American Indian woman or girl victim within your jurisdiction(s). For the purposes of this request, "Alaska Native/American Indian" is defined as any individual who was identified as a member of an Alaska Native or American Indian community or as having Alaska Native/American Indian heritage. "Woman or girl" includes all victims identified as females, as well as transgender women. If there are any Jane Does that have been identified as potentially Alaska Native or American Indian, please include them as well. We are requesting cases dating from 1900 to the present. This request is for basic information on cases as classified above. Such information may include but is not limited to victim name, location and date of disappearance/death, age of victim, status of case (solved or unsolved)

In discussing this with our records people, I learned that the information you are requesting is not already compiled in this form, and pulling the information out that you request would require an extensive manual search. We estimate that there are around 7-10 native females killed year. Our public record law does not require an agency to compile or summarize information in response to a public request for records or manipulate data to create new records ( see 2 AAC 96.210 (b) and (c)). However, an agency may if doing so will not impair the functioning of the agency, and the requestor pays the cost of developing the requested record ( see 2 AAC 96.210 (c) 1 and 3).

We estimate that I would take about 3 hours of work for each year researched--- going back 10 years, for example, would require 30 hours of labor. You ask for data back to 1900 ( as a side note, our records do not extend that far back, which would have been before the Territorial Government was established). I believe the oldest records of the Department of Public Safety go back to the 1940's. Still, this is a substantial request and would exceed the available labor resources at this time--- accordingly, I am denying your request. I will provide additional information on the appeal process below.

That said, if you would like to work with the department to narrow your search please feel free to call me or email to discuss possibilities. You may also find some of the information you are looking for by reviewing the annual Unified Crime Report published by DPS. Here is a link with reports back to 2000:

https://dps.alaska.gov/getmedia/d31723ba-5195-432b-854f-9991025f25b4/CIAK2016-for-publication-REV-09-06-17;.aspx

Regarding your request for information about " deaths in custody" -DPS does not keep these statistics. The Alaska Department of Corrections will be your resource for this information.

For the reasons stated above, under the authority delegated to me by the Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, and in accordance with 2 AAC 96.335, I am denying your request to obtain these records. Since I have denied your request, I have provided information on the appeal procedure in the document attached. There is no bond requirement for an administrative appeal.

You may also obtain immediate judicial review of this denial by seeking an injunction form the superior court under AS 40.25.125. Choosing not to pursue injunctive relief in superior court will have no adverse effect on your rights before the department.

Best,
Allison

Allison Hanzawa
Special Assistant to the Commissioner/Legislative Liaison
Department of Public Safety
(907) 465-5505

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Anita Lucchesi,

Attached please find the answers to your Public Information Request. Per our conversation on the phone, the information included is from 2013 thru October 25th, 2018 and is data relating to all currently missing persons, all homicides (solved and still under investigation), and deaths in custody of Native females regardless of age.

As I mentioned during our conversation, the reason the data is only from 2013 to date, is prior to that time our reports were on paper and so the information you are requesting is not located in one place and easily or quickly obtained. It would take an unknown amount of time to determine what documents need to be gathered, then get them all together, then read through each one to get the data you requested.

You will find on the attached excel document that there are two tabs. The first is Missing Persons - The first missing person listed is actually missing in Juneau Police Department area, however since DPS is where the Missing Person Clearinghouse is housed we have a file to track that person since she is still missing.

The second tab is Deaths. It is currently sorted by year, newest to oldest and hopefully is clear as to what type of case each one is.

If you need any clarifying information relating to this data, please let me know.

Thanks again for working with us to assist you in providing what we can at this time.

Lt. Kat Shuey
Director's Staff
Alaska State Troopers
907-269-3618