State will not file charges against Anchorage police sergeant who fatally shot knife-wielding man

The Alaska Department of Law said that criminal charges will not be filed against the Anchorage police sergeant who fatally shot a 24-year-old man who ran at the officer while holding a knife in late September.

The determination announced Tuesday reflects the latest in a string of deadly police shootings to be deemed justified this year. No law enforcement officers in Alaska have been criminally charged for their role in a shooting in recent decades.

James Afuvai died after being shot twice by police Sgt. James Dokken in the Mountain View neighborhood on Sept. 29. Police said an officer trained to respond to possible mental health issues was responding but was still en route when the shooting occurred.

Afuvai was the eighth person to be shot by police so far this year. In total, five people died and three were wounded. The department recently concluded an internal review of police shootings during the last 15 years that police Chief Sean Case said will change how officers respond to high-risk calls.

The state Office of Special Prosecutions’ 23-page review of Afuvai’s shooting was sent last week to Case. The review determined Dokken was justified in shooting Afuvai because he reasonably believed the other man would otherwise harm or kill him. Dokken has been with the department for 16 years.

The police department on Tuesday also released body-camera footage showing the moments leading up to Afuvai’s death.

The footage included audio of three 911 calls Afuvai made just after 6:30 p.m. Sept. 29. In the calls, he asked for police to respond to the 500 block of North Park Street, but provided different reasons and gave dispatchers a fake name.

In the first call, Afuvai said “I think I’m in trouble” and that “somebody’s hurt” before he hung up. In the next call he told them “there’s people going around shooting up the neighborhood” and said his window had been shot the night before. He called 911 a third time to check if police were responding.

Dokken and two other officers met at a police substation in Mountain View to discuss their approach, the state review said. One of the officers called Afuvai directly while on the way to the substation to get more information, it said. During the call, Afuvai told the officer “there’s a crazy guy with a knife” standing in front of him outside.

The officers found that Afuvai was classified in their database as a “red flag offender” because he had a history of being violent, the state review said. During a later interview with investigators, Dokken said an officer assigned to the department’s Mobile Intervention Team had been requested to join the response, but he was driving from the other side of town, according to the review.

Officers with the team are specially trained to respond to mental health crises and are generally paired with a behavioral health clinician.

But because the team is relatively new and there is limited staffing, a clinician was not available that day to respond, Case said in an interview Wednesday.

Dokken and the two officers decided to drive by the area where Afuvai was believed to be to make sure no one was injured while they waited on the MIT officer, the review said

Dokken parked next to Duldida Park and saw a shirtless man, later identified as Afuvai, outside the address where the call had been requested, the review said. Afuvai began to walk toward Dokken’s car. The sergeant told investigators he got out of his patrol car to contact Afuvai because he believed Afuvai was coming to talk to him about the call, according to the review.

Almost immediately after getting out of the car, Dokken can be heard in the body-camera footage alerting other officers over the radio that Afuvai had a knife.

The footage shows Dokken walking backward with his gun drawn and repeatedly ordering Afuvai to drop the knife. Afuvai continues to walk forward and does not drop the knife. An uninvolved civilian pickup truck turns onto the street just as the other two officers approach in their car and turn on their lights and sirens.

Afuvai glances back at the vehicles and then runs at Dokken while still holding the knife, the footage shows, and Dokken shoots at him three times. Afuvai was struck twice, once in his torso and in his thigh, the state review said.

The other officers quickly get out of the car and order Afuvai, who is on the ground, to drop the knife, the footage shows. Afuvai was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Case on Wednesday said he thought the officers prepared for and handled the situation as well as possible. He said officers requested additional help to respond to someone with possible mental health issues.

Case said the officers thought through their response before arrival, but it “turned into a very dynamic situation very, very quickly.”

“You always want these situations to unfold differently because the loss of life involved is traumatic — it’s traumatic to officers, it’s traumatic to the community,” he said. “And so when I look at this incident, there’s not a lot of takeaways as to what we could have differently because I think we prepared for this scenario, and unfortunately that’s the situation that officers find themselves in sometimes.”