On Dec. 28, a Juneau police officer shot and killed a man while responding to a 911 call.
The shooting exposed deep divisions in the community. Some are questioning why the man who was killed provoked police, and others are asking whether it was necessary to use lethal force.
The last time a police officer in Juneau shot and killed someone was in 2007. According to police records, there was a 911 call about a man who was holding a knife to a woman’s throat. When the Juneau police officer got there, the man had a sword. He screamed at the officer and threatened him with it, and the officer eventually shot him in the chest.
Greg Browning was Juneau’s police chief at the time.
“All officer-involved shootings become controversial,” he said. “You know, people think, ‘Well why didn’t the officer shoot the sword out of his hand?’”
In this particular case though, there was an audio recording that, Browning said, made it pretty clear that the officer had done everything he could to avoid using deadly force.
“So I kind of took the unconventional step of just bringing that tape down to the Juneau Empire and letting them have it,” Browning said. “So they could put it out to the public, so they could make their own decision on whether the officer was justified in what he did or not.”
This time around, the Juneau Police Department hasn’t released any footage or audio from the Dec. 28 shooting — they denied a records request seeking access to it.
They also haven’t released the 911 call that prompted Officer James Esbenshade to go to Cinema Drive, where he later shot Juneau resident Kelly Michael Stephens.
Source: A week after a fatal police shooting, a community searches for answers