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Vol. 49, Issue 285
In the news
State public defender named ANCHORAGE — Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office has announced the appointment of an Anchorage attorney as Alaska’s new Public Defender. The Tuesday announcement says Samantha Cherot fills the position held by longtime Public Defender Quinlan Steiner, who resigned in April. A news release from the governor’s office says Cherot most recently worked as an assistant public defender in Anchorage. Steiner had initially planned to resign when his replacement was appointed. But Dunleavy spokesman Matt Shuckerow says that under state law, the governor and Judicial Council can only act to fill that vacancy after the vacancy occurs. Shuckerow says Steiner left the job April 12. He says public advocacy attorney Beth Goldstein has worked as acting Public Defender since Steiner’s departure.
Police ID man found killed ANCHORAGE — Anchorage police have released the name of a man found dead last week on the city’s east side. Police say the man killed was 49-year-old Reid Labeck. A passer-by Thursday night found Labeck’s body at a wooded camp south of Debarr Road and Boston Street. Homicide detectives concluded that Labeck had suffered trauma to his body and classified the case as a homicide. Police have asked witnesses with information or surveillance video to contact them.
Troopers say man killed brother, attempted suicide ANCHORAGE — Alaska State Troopers say a southwest Alaska man shot and killed his brother and then turned the gun on himself. Troopers say the Akiachak shooter survived the shotgun blast and was flown to Seattle for treatment of life-threatening injuries. Troopers took a call on the shootings Friday night. Troopers say a 32-year-old man argued over alcohol with his 36-year-old brother, retrieved a shotgun and shot the older man in the face, killing him. — Associated Press
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Hockey
Lewandowski, Dems spar at hearing
Brown Bears open NAHL season today
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CLARION P E N I N S U L A
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Wednesday, September 18, 2019 Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
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Tentative deal struck, strike averted By Victoria Petersen Peninsula Clarion
An educator and support staff strike was averted hours before it was slated to begin, early Tuesday morning, when the school district and two employee associations reached a tentative agreement.
The agreement for a three-year contract, reached at 1:37 a.m., will be effective between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2021. “We’re glad we didn’t have to go on strike,” Kenai Peninsula Education Association President David Brighton said. “Teachers are very excited to be back in their classrooms and working
with students. No one wanted that interruption to the education process. I’m also very thankful for the community support that we felt throughout this process.” The associations and the district had been negotiating for a contract for nearly 600 days, and bargaining was snagged on the rising cost
of health care. After contract negotiations hit a standstill last week, the education associations notified the school district Friday of their intent to strike. The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District presented the See deal, Page A3
election 2019 | Borough Assembly
Meet the candidates Profiles by Brian Mazurek u Peninsula Clarion
The assembly candidates for District 3 were each asked a series of general questions and one question specific to each candidate’s background.
Jesse Bjorkman Nikiski resident Jesse Bjorkman is seeking a seat in District 3 — representing the Nikiski area — on the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly. The seat is currently held by Wayne Ogle. According to his candidate file, Bjorkman
is a teacher, fisherman and radio talk show host. Jesse Bjorkman Bjorkman has been an Alaska resident for 10 years, his file says. He attended
Michigan State University where he received a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary social science with a focus in international relations and economics. Bjorkman has been a precinct leader in District 29 for the Alaska GOP since 2014 and currently teaches history at Nikiski Middle/High School.
What makes you qualified to serve on the assembly? I have a lot of experience paying attention to local politics, and seeing how the assembly interacts with itself as well as the state government has given me a lot of insight into some ideas for the assembly to work better
with the mayor — to come to agreements on what to do to move the community of Nikiski and the Kenai Peninsula Borough forward. And not simply have disagreements for the sake of disagreeing sometimes. So the experience I bring to the table is
Nikiski Hardware & Supply. He has been a resident of John Quick Alaska since 2015, his file says. Quick has a bachelor’s in business administration from Northwest University. He
previously served as the chief of staff to borough Mayor Charlie Pierce and was Department of Administration Commissioner Designee for Gov. Mike Dunleavy. What makes you qualified to serve on the assembly? Well, there’s actually only a couple qualifications for the borough.
You’ve got to be a certain age and if you have to be a resident of the borough. More importantly, I think, is I have a real passion to serve, and so I think that being part of the assembly, whether you’re on a service board or an assembly member or just somebody that’s volunteering service is a big part of that. It’s actually so
important to me that I’m going to withdraw myself from taking a paycheck, health care benefits and a retirement plan from the borough, and just be an actual volunteer if elected as the assembly person. What do you hope to accomplish while serving on the assembly?
has lived in Nikiski for 37 years and has owned and operated a Joseph Ross gravel business, Alaska Roadrunners LLC, since 1993. Ross has
previously served nine years on the Kenai Peninsula Borough Road Service Area Board as an at-large member from 1999-2008. What makes you qualified to serve on the assembly? I would say my years of being in the community and being involved in
things. You know, you’ve got people that run for positions, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a service area board or an assembly position or city council or whatever, but you have people that run that, you don’t know what their reason for running is. Maybe it’s one concern, one issue, and they want to do
something about that one thing. I’ve been involved in all kinds of stuff here. I’ve volunteered for lots of places, Habitat for Humanity and After the Bell and over at the Food Bank and that kind of stuff. I’m active at the Nikiski Senior Center, and they
John Quick Nikiski resident John Quick is seeking a seat in District 3 — representing Nikiski — on the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly. The seat is currently held by Wayne Ogle. According to his candidate file, Quick is currently the managing director of
Joseph Ross Nikiski resident Joseph Ross is running for the District 3 seat — representing Nikiski — on the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly. The seat is currently held by Wayne Ogle. According to his candidate file, Ross
See bjorkman, Page A15
See quick, Page A15
See ross, Page A16
Native women say police ignored rapes in Nome By Victoria McKenzie Associated Press
NOME — There’s not much that scares Susie. As an Alaska Native woman, she thrives amid sub-zero winters in her village near the Arctic Circle, and camps with her family each summer at the Bering Sea, catching, drying and smoking salmon to put away for winter. But Susie is afraid to return to Nome. The man who raped her, she says, is still there. “Just scares me, and I’m scared to see him, and thinking what he might do,” she says. “But I’m not scared in the village, or any other villages, because I know he won’t come. “But Nome is like … I don’t really like to overnight in Nome.” He is a free man — no charges were filed against him. Susie reported to Nome police that she had been assaulted and went with the investigating officer to the hospital, where a forensic nurse was prepared to perform a sexual assault exam. But the officer told the nurse not to bother, according to a hospital record that Susie released to The Associated Press . “The Officer stated that he was going to cancel the exam because he had already talked to the suspect and the man admitted that he ‘had sex’ with the patient but that it was consensual,” the nurse wrote in the report. “Therefore the officer did not see a need for an exam.” Susie’s story isn’t uncommon in
Wong Maye-E / Associated Press
Three men shovel snow from the roof of a grocery store Feb. 14 as a statue of one of the “Three Lucky Swedes,” credited with discovering gold in the late 19th century, stands in the foreground, in Nome. The city later added statues of two Alaska Native boys who led him to find the gold.
Nome, a city of fewer than 4,000 fulltime residents that serves as a regional hub for dozens of smaller villages across western Alaska’s Bering Strait region. Rape survivors and their supporters told the AP that the city’s police department has often failed to investigate sexual assaults or keep survivors informed about what, if anything, is happening with their cases. Survivors and advocates contend that Nome police pay less attention and investigate less aggressively when sexual assaults are reported by Alaska Native women. More than half of Nome’s population is Alaska
Native, largely of Yupik heritage or — like Susie — of Inupiaq heritage. All of its police department’s sworn officers are non-Native. It has one female sworn officer. In many ways, Nome mirrors the national debate that has gained momentum over the past three years in the wake of a series of sexual abuse scandals involving entertainers, Hollywood moguls and politicians. Nome’s grassroots struggle illustrates how one American hometown is wrestling with issues of sexual violence and law enforcement — and how a history of racial disparity and unacknowledged trauma has impeded efforts to address
what the human rights group Amnesty USA has called an epidemic of sexual assaults against Native women across the United States. In 2013 — the year Susie reported she had been sexually assaulted — Nome police received 33 calls about sexual assaults against adults. That year, the department made one arrest on a sexual assault charge. In all, Nome police records show, the department fielded 372 calls about sexual assaults against adults from 2008 through 2017. During that span, 30 cases — 8% of the total — led to arrests on sexual assault charges. By comparison, a study of six police departments across the U.S. published this year by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell found that just under 19% of sexual assault reports led to arrests. Even that arrest rate raises questions about how seriously police agencies take sexual violence, according to criminal justice experts and advocates for sexual assault survivors. Police agencies in big cities, suburbs and small towns have been accused of failing to test DNA evidence gathered in thousands of rape cases ; dismissing rape reports because officers believed that victims did not “fight back” hard enough; and showing less concern about rape complaints from African Americans, Native Americans and other less powerful groups. In Nome, local officials defend the police department, saying low staffing See rapes, Page A15