Dozens arrested in Anchorage warrant roundup, police say

A two-day law enforcement operation targeting people with outstanding arrest warrants ended last week with more than two dozen people in custody, police said Tuesday.

More than 100 officers from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies fanned out across the city Feb. 20 and 21, knocking on doors to find people with outstanding felony warrants. About 5,000 people in Anchorage have outstanding arrest warrants — nearly half of all the warrants in the state, according to Lt. Gerard Asselin of the Anchorage Police Department’s special teams unit — though last week’s roundup focused on violent felonies.

For police, “violent felonies” meant not only violent crimes like assault, but also crimes often linked with violence, like drug offenses and theft, Asselin said in a Tuesday press conference.

“It’s people who are frequent offenders, people who are violent offenders, people that we’ve had trouble taking into custody or ... people that have demonstrated by their behavior that they are exceptionally dangerous to law enforcement and to the community,” said Anchorage Police Chief Justin Doll.

Of the 28 people arrested over those two days, all but one had felony warrants for crimes ranging from vehicle theft and robbery to assault and sexual abuse of minors. One person with a misdemeanor rather than felony warrant was arrested incidentally after police found her with a suspect they had originally been looking for.

Many of those arrested had already entered the justice system in connection with the charges they were being sought for, meaning they had violated probation or a condition of their release or had failed to appear in court, Asselin said.

Officers found the offenders all over Anchorage, from downtown south to DeArmoun Road, rather than concentrated in certain neighborhoods, Asselin said.

Often, he said, people who have arrest warrants are prone to committing additional crimes because they aren’t able to find legitimate work.

“Our intent there is to target these folks, arrest them, and get them back into the justice system with the hope of suppressing additional crimes that we’ve been seeing within our community," he said.

Police officials said the operation was able to happen because of a federal grant that provides assistance to state and local law enforcement agencies combating violent crime and increased staffing within the police department. The Anchorage Police Department has about 430 officers on staff, Doll said.