Two downtown agencies want to use their own security teams to make Anchorage's core a safer and more pleasant place for workers and visitors as the city's overtaxed police department has been focusing more on violent crimes than public nuisances.
A security hotline and dispatch system, increased training for security officers and better networking between downtown security companies make up the elements of an evolving plan.
With it, the two agencies — the Anchorage Community Development Authority, the agency that manages the city's parking meters, garages and downtown bus depot, and the Anchorage Downtown Partnership, an organization supported by downtown businesses that deploys yellow-vested security "ambassadors" to patrol the streets — hope to reclaim downtown from petty criminals and mischief-makers.
The agencies are introducing a hotline that downtown visitors and businesses can call or text to ask for help or report suspicious activity. One goal is that security will respond to those calls in seven minutes or less.
Eventually, officials want to lower the response time to three minutes.
As Anchorage police staffing has declined in recent years, cops have trouble keeping up with minor crimes. While police say they devote more resources to downtown than anywhere else, they say violent crimes, like robberies, are their priorities — not shoplifting, trespassing or public drunkenness that cause headaches for downtown businesses and unease for customers, but not serious injuries.
"Sometimes we can wait up to 45 minutes for something downtown that's not an emergency," said Andrew Halcro, executive director of the Anchorage Community Development Authority.
Meanwhile, a displacement problem may be looming for downtown. Halcro's agency is preparing to shut down the bus depot on Sixth Avenue by the end of the year. Rising levels of crime and misbehavior triggered plans for a major overhaul at the bus depot, but it is one of the few public spaces downtown, and it's an open question where people will go when it's shuttered.
To help improve communication among downtown security, Halcro has volunteered the parking authority's 22-hour dispatch center and its security camera system. He said the dispatch center could become a clearinghouse for communications across the downtown area, with the hope of filling in the gaps left by police.
Last month, Halcro approached Jamie Boring, the new executive director of the Downtown Partnership, about combining security forces and training. EasyPark trains its security employees, who check parking meters and monitor garages, on how to interact with people on the street, including personal safety courses and "verbal judo" to defuse a tense situation.
Talk of a security network
The "ambassadors" from the Downtown Partnership often have security or military backgrounds, but have not been receiving the same level of training. Now ambassadors will receive the same training as EasyPark employees, Boring said.
Halcro has also met with the Anchorage Police Department about using its Citizens Academy alumni to create a patrol program for downtown. Those citizens, who have already expressed curiosity about law enforcement, would be paired with ambassadors and parking enforcement officers, Halcro said. He said he's working on details of the proposal now.
There's also a larger effort to involve other private security companies downtown. Last week, the Downtown Partnership convened the first of what Boring said will be monthly security meetings.
Security officials from the Anchorage 5th Avenue mall, Hotel Captain Cook, downtown convention centers, Sheraton Hotel, ConocoPhillips office building and EasyPark listened as Boring laid out the plans for the new security hotline and for the Downtown Partnership and ACDA to coordinate security staff.
Officials who had never before seen each other ended up chatting and exchanging business cards. They said they wanted to find ways to share information in the future, though it wasn't immediately clear how.
"This is good, that we might help each other be a network," said Joshua Frye, director of security for the Captain Cook.
"We've been involved in our own little siloed contracts, dealing with our own issues, bouncing the less fortunate people back and forth."
There was also talk of alerting each other once one pushes a problem out the door. Sal Urzi, director of the security at 5th Avenue mall, said he was keenly aware that once he removed people from the mall, he lost track of them.
"Where are they going? Who's dealing with them next?" Urzi said.
Cops triage downtown
Sgt. Josh Nolder, supervisor for the APD's Community Action Policing Team, said police are aware of efforts to link private security company communications. He said it's a good thing.
"From a law enforcement perspective, that's awesome to see," Nolder said. "Honestly, that's what community policing is about … it means the community becomes involved and helps police when problems come up."
He referred to the current police response downtown as "triage," because the department is short on staffing.
"We're going to go to the robberies, the burglaries, going to go to all of that higher stuff," Nolder said. "Things like shoplifts, trespasses ... we're going to go to them, but it's obviously at the bottom of the list."
Replacing the police, however, is not the goal of the downtown security program, Halcro said.
"It's really to observe and report," Halcro said. "To serve as a function as more of … sentinels, rather than enforcers."
He said the aim is to have security officers trained well enough to know when to back off and call the police if a situation escalates.
The effort is also so far limited to the daytime hours. No one has yet come up with a plan for addressing problems at night, especially when bars close, Boring said.
Halcro and Boring both envision creating a grid of downtown. Using the parking authority's dispatch system, they said, a response to an incident would come from the nearest help, including private security officials from downtown buildings.
It's not clear whether that's possible. Each security officer has been asked to check on liability issues, Boring said. At the very least, Halcro said, the dispatch center could allow a security official at the Hotel Captain Cook to call ambassadors or EasyPark security for backup.
At the same time, Boring said his staff is researching ways to prevent problems from surfacing in the first place, particularly when mental illness and homelessness are at play. He said putting criminals in handcuffs isn't necessarily the goal.
"The ambassador's position is to come at it from an angle of love," Boring said. "Let's understand their needs first, and then figure out how to get them the help they need … rather than just pushing them around."
Since the fall, Mike Knecht, the interim security director at the Downtown Partnership, has been meeting with Monica Stoesser, an outreach worker with Anchorage Community Mental Health Services, and other service providers to discuss ways to connect people with mental health or addiction issues to services. Staff for Mayor Ethan Berkowitz have also been keeping tabs on the discussions between the different agencies, as the mayor's office tries to compile a list of the city's most vulnerable homeless.
Halcro, who previously served as president of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce and ran for mayor last spring, said he'd been thinking more and more about downtown security ever since he started in his current job last August.
"I think it's time we all get together and say, 'This is our downtown,'" Halcro said. "The police have limited resources and other priorities … it's time for us to get together and start sharing knowledge, information, and leveraging our internal resources."