The Alaska Department of Public Safety as well as Anchorage Police Department Anchorage Police Department announced Tuesday that they will release new quarterly reports focusing specifically on the disappearance of Indigenous people.
Alaska has a high number of cases for missing or murdered Indigenous ladies and children. A report from the year 2018 from the Urban Indian Health Institute found that Alaska was the fourth-highest number of cases in any state. The federal, state tribal, and grassroots interests have all been pushing to determine the reason and to increase security in Indigenous communities.
The majority of the information contained included in the new report is derived from the existing, public missing person information sets. However, it contains some new information: the reasons surrounding each disappearance that is not resolved.
Austin McDaniel, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety, stated that the agency’s analysts were required to go through the 280 cases of missing persons that are Indigenous or of a race that is not known to find that particular piece of information. Some of the cases go to the year 1960.
“Yeah it was a significant improvement,” he said. “We’ve not yet openly provided this amount of information on missing persons cases that are, as you know in the eyes of law enforcement agencies, still open.”
Analysts classified the events into the four categories. Over three-quarters of the deaths were linked to environmental incidents such as plane crashes or accidents in the wilderness. They are still considered missing in the event that their remains aren’t discovered.
The remaining 30 instances were classified as not to be suspicious. McDaniel suggested that there could be instances in which the person who was missing fled the country but authorities haven’t been in a position to determine if they’re healthy and alive.
The remainder – about one eighth was classified as suspicious or unidentified categories.
The department explained that the new reports are the result of the discussions held by what is known as the Governor’s Council on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons. Members wanted greater transparency and more accurate data about the missing Indigenous people.
McDaniel said that the reports will also aid in making higher-level decisions on the best way to allocate on law enforcement resources and increase the interagency communications.
“There definitely could be an application for the police aspect,” he said. “The state troopers are able to access data from state troopers and, in actuality they can access they can access the Anchorage PD can access Anchorage PD information. It’s not often possible for us to get a lot of information about the activities of other agencies.”
The state also pledged to include all missing persons’ information into the national data base within 30 days after having been reported missing. In its report of 2018 The Urban Indian Health Institute said agencies’ inadequate reporting to the database causes the undercounts and inaccurate perceptions of the situation.
Kendra Kloster is a member of the governor’s advisory council and is involved in the area of law and policy within the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center. She expressed her delight to read about the latest report and described them as positive steps but there’s still a lot to accomplish.
“This isn’t the ultimate goal of all systems of data in this case,” she said. “There’s still plenty of other data to gather and then put into this.”
She added that there are plenty of areas in rural Alaska which aren’t on the list.
This report’s first quarter only includes cases handled by state troopers as well as the Anchorage police. McDaniel stated that they would like to see more agencies will join in the near future.
