Obama-linked policing consultants deliver $114,000 APD use-of-force review as Anchorage crime climbs

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Sept. 3, 2026 – A Chicago consulting firm built around veterans of President Barack Obama’s policing-reform task force has delivered a sweeping review of the Anchorage Police Department, recommending tighter use-of-force rules, more de-escalation training and additional oversight at a time when crime in Anchorage is driving Alaska’s statewide numbers upward.

The Anchorage Municipal Attorney’s Office released the 121-page report Wednesday. It was prepared by 21CP Solutions, also known as 21st Century Policing LLC, under a contract approved during Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s administration.

The six-month contract was not to exceed $114,005. The city selected the firm in mid-2025 following a competitive process that included municipal officials, the police union, and community representatives.

21CP is not simply a neutral accounting firm crunching Anchorage crime statistics. Its institutional roots are in the national police-reform movement that followed several high-profile police shootings during the Obama Administration.

The company was founded in 2015 by Charles H. Ramsey, Sean Smoot and Roberto Villaseñor, all of whom participated in President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

Ramsey, a former Philadelphia police commissioner and Washington, D.C., police chief, co-chaired the Obama task force. Smoot, now 21CP’s managing partner, served on the task force and advised the Obama-Biden presidential transition teams. Villaseñor, the former Tucson police chief, was also appointed to the task force by Obama.

The firm’s work grew out of the task force’s recommendations and concentrates on police policy, constitutional policing, use of force, racial disparities, community relations, organizational reform and implementation of federal consent decrees.

Its team includes former police chiefs, civil-rights attorneys and police-practices specialists. Matthew Barge, the contact listed on the Anchorage proposal, has worked on federal consent-decree monitoring teams in Baltimore, Cleveland and Seattle.

That background is context for understanding the framework through which 21CP examined APD. The firm describes its approach as collaborative and data-driven, but its recommendations generally reflect the policing-reform model developed nationally during and after the Obama administration.

The Anchorage report contains findings that cut against the worn-out narrative that APD officers are increasingly relying on force.

The number of APD incidents involving force fell 17% between 2022 and 2024, according to 21CP. Use of force in 2024 was also 4.7% lower than in 2021.

Nearly nine out of every 10 incidents were classified at the lowest level of force. Fewer than 1% involved Level 3 force, the department’s most serious category.

That decline occurred at the same time Anchorage’s crime problem was worsening.

Alaska’s 2025 Crime in Alaska report found that reported offenses increased statewide by 7.2% last year. The Department of Public Safety said the increase was driven by Anchorage, where offenses reported by APD jumped 14.6%.

Anchorage property crime increased 19.4%, while violent crime rose 1.2%.

Outside Anchorage, the trend was markedly different. Offenses reported by the Alaska State Troopers fell 5.9%, including a 6.8% decline in property crime and a 5% reduction in violent crime.

The two reports cover different measurements and somewhat different periods. The use-of-force study examined police encounters from January 2021 through June 2025, while the state crime report covered offenses reported during all of 2025. They therefore cannot be treated as a direct cause-and-effect comparison.

But together they show that APD was reducing its use of force while policing the very jurisdiction responsible for driving Alaska’s reported crime rate higher.

Alaska crime rises 7.2%, with Anchorage driving statewide increase

Mayor LaFrance ordered the outside review in August 2024 after a series of officer-involved shootings, including fatal encounters. It was the second of two outside examinations coordinated by the Municipal Attorney’s Office.

The first focused specifically on an Aug. 13, 2024, shooting. The broader 21CP review examined APD policies, training, tactics, supervision and data covering more than 5,700 force incidents from January 2021 through June 2025.

The firm also separately reviewed 11 officer-involved shootings from January 2024 through May 2025 and 34 randomly selected Level 2 force cases that went before APD’s Force Review Board in 2025.

The report divided force into three levels. Level 1 includes such actions as pushing, grabbing, taking someone to the ground or using soft-hand control. Level 2 includes pepper spray and other intermediate weapons or tactics. Level 3 includes deadly force and some high-risk vehicle maneuvers.

Most APD force was used while making an arrest. The firm found that 76.3% of force incidents were associated with an arrest, while 12.8% involved preventing an escape. In more than three-quarters of the cases, the subject was described by APD as actively resisting. Another 17.4% involved assaultive resistance.

The most common police technique was soft-hand control, recorded in 93.4% of force incidents.

The report found that confirmed or suspected mental illness was a factor in 56.2% of encounters involving force. That places Anchorage’s behavioral-health, drug and street-disorder problems directly within the city’s policing challenge, as officers are routinely sent to handle situations that may combine criminal activity with addiction, mental illness and homelessness.

Reviewers said some officers could have made greater use of distance, cover or concealment when confronting people with knives or other non-firearm weapons. The firm also found cases in which officers did not clearly communicate or coordinate a tactical plan before an encounter escalated.

Several examples in the report also show the difficult and dangerous circumstances APD officers faced.

One involved an armed man who fired at officers. Another involved a reportedly intoxicated man waving a handgun and firing a shot in a neighborhood. Other cases included a man threatening people with scissors, a suspect armed with a samurai sword at a church and a domestic-violence suspect who struck an officer and broke his glasses.

In several of those cases, the report concluded the force used was necessary, proportional and reasonable, even while recommending that officers change how they approached the encounter.

A small group of APD officers accounted for a significant share of the department’s force incidents. Of the 402 APD personnel who used force during the period, 20 officers, approximately 5%, were involved in about 19% of the incidents.

Six officers were involved in 100 or more separate force incidents, and two recorded more than 200 individual applications of force.

Officers who are assigned to particular units, shifts, or high-crime areas repeatedly encounter resistant and assaultive suspects, thus the data does not indicate wrongdoing. These officers are heroic in providing safety to the public, no matter what.

Still, 21CP recommended a stronger early-intervention system to identify patterns and provide training, mentoring or other support.

The report placed considerable emphasis on race. It found American Indian and Alaska Native people were subjects in 45.4% of APD force incidents, compared with 7.3% of Anchorage’s population under the single-race category used in the 2020 Census. The context for this is that Alaska Native people also make up about 53–54% of street and trail dwellers in Anchorage.

Black people were involved in 12.9% of force encounters, compared with 5% of the city’s population.

But even the report itself warned that comparing police encounters with the overall population is an “incomplete and imperfect” method of measuring disparity. The Census and APD also use different racial classifications, particularly for people identifying with two or more races.

More than 93% of force involving Alaska Native or American Indian subjects was Level 1. Alaska Native subjects accounted for 19.6% of the most serious Level 3 incidents, compared with 34.8% involving white subjects.

The consultants also compared Anchorage’s use-of-force rate with other cities. APD recorded 1,148 force incidents in 2024, or 397 per 100,000 residents. That was higher than reported rates in Portland, Seattle, Boise, Spokane and New Orleans.

But the report acknowledged that the comparison has significant limitations. Departments define reportable use of force differently. APD counts some vehicle tactics and physical contacts that other departments do not, which may make Anchorage’s rate appear higher simply because APD records more encounters.

The report recommended restrictions on APD’s use of blocking, boxing, pinning, and PIT maneuvers (forcing a fleeing vehicle to maneuver sideways and stop). Reviewers concluded that some vehicle tactics unnecessarily exposed officers, suspects, and members of the public to danger.

21CP recommended limiting PIT maneuvers to speeds of 35 mph or less. APD rejected that specific threshold and adopted a 45-mph limit.

Other recommendations included requiring de-escalation whenever safe and feasible, requiring officers to intervene when another officer uses improper force, restricting force against peaceful protesters and requiring officers to exhaust reasonably available alternatives before using deadly force.

The firm called for recorded internal-affairs interviews, tactical debriefings after shootings, stronger reviews of serious incidents and public disclosure of APD’s administrative findings after officer-involved shootings.

APD says it has fully integrated 49 of the actionable recommendations into policies or operating practices, with two partially addressed and other work underway.

The department extended paid administrative leave for officers involved in shootings from four days to seven days. It also expanded force reviews and revised pursuit and vehicle-tactics policies.

That implementation assessment was prepared by APD, not independently verified by the consultant. The final report states that 21CP received APD’s analysis in August and did not evaluate whether the department’s claimed changes were sufficient.

The final report therefore presents two overlapping questions for Anchorage.

One is whether APD can improve training, supervision and decision-making in difficult encounters, particularly those involving behavioral-health crises and vehicle pursuits.

The other is whether city leaders can impose additional restrictions without hampering officers confronting a 19.4% surge in property crime and a city crime problem large enough to pull the entire state’s numbers in the wrong direction.

The municipality will hold a community presentation from 5:30 to 7 pm Sept. 8, at the Fairview Community Recreation Center, 1121 E. 10th Ave. Written questions may be submitted at the event or sent to Office Of Equity And Inclusion by noon Tuesday.

The Anchorage Assembly Public Health and Safety Committee will hear another presentation from 11 am to 12:30 pm Wednesday, Sept. 9, at City Hall. The meeting will include a short public-testimony period and will be streamed on the municipality’s YouTube channel.

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