Anchorage police have identified a man's body found last week near Chester Creek in an apparent outdoor death. According to a Wednesday statement from APD spokesperson Jennifer Castro, 49-year-old John Sallaffie’s next of kin have been notified. “An autopsy has been conducted and no evidence of foul play was discovered,” Castro wrote. “His death is still under investigation and police are waiting for toxicology results.”

Castro says the toxicology results on Sallaffie will take several weeks to process.

"We do believe that he was homeless -- there are indications of that," Castro said. Sallaffie’s body was found by a man walking his dog off Ingra Street. At the time, police said his death may be related to exposure.

About three-fourths of the Iron Dog snowmachine race’s 2014 field is on track to leave Nome after a 36-hour layover, opening the second half of the high-speed dash to Fairbanks after covering about 1,000 miles from the race’s Sunday start in Big Lake. In the day since Team 10’s Mike Morgan and Chris Olds led the race into Nome at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, race standings as of 5 p.m. Wednesday show a total of 26 teams in Nome for rest and repairs. Two teams are bringing up the rear of the field, with Team 26 riders Jacob Hartley and Devin LaBarbera leaving White Mountain at 2:52 p.m. and Team 33’s Michael Fuller and Eddie Kinn out of Koyuk as of 2:05 p.m. During their 36 hours in Nome, teams are given 20 minutes to check over their sleds and see what needs fixing. The teams then break to collect parts and create a plan on how to fix their sleds in the quickest way possible -- because once they start wrenching they're on the clock, with any time spent on repairs tacked on to their trail time. Team 8’s Tyson Johnson and Tyler Aklestad were already aware of an issue with the frame on Aklestad’s sled, but their inability to fix it on the trail led to further issues. "We were actually going to repair it in McGrath, but we weren’t able to get the parts,” Johnson said. “We did a quick patch just to get us by and it’s held all the way to here, but some other parts because of that have failed -- so we have to replace the main structural frame part, that goes around the handlebars down to the frame.” Ten of the Iron Dog’s original 38 teams have now scratched from the race, with three -- Doug Dixon and Mike Vasser in Team 3, Tim Jauhola and Kyla Malamute in Team 4, and Chris Carroll and Ray Chvastasz in Team 5 -- making that decision after reaching Nome. Wednesday’s fourth scratch, Team 29 riders Russell Griffin and Chris Kruse, took place after the two pulled out of Unalakleet at 9 a.m. Channel 2’s Kari Bustamante contributed information to this story.

There are no snow berms to speak of in Bethel on a sunny Tuesday in February, and the nearby tundra is similarly, conspicuously, ice-slicked and snow-free.

At the Alaska Commercial Value Center, customers and employees laugh at stories of the gridlocked South, where a dusting of snow here and a patch of ice there wreaked havoc everywhere.

Talks around town also center on a perpetual topic: how to safely travel to any of the several dozen villages strewn across the shores of the Kuskokwim River.

Airplanes are good when the wind cooperates; boats get the job done when the ice breaks up. But even amid an unseasonably warm winter, travel along the frozen river – by four-wheeler, snow machine and truck – remains one of the most common transportation methods.

The original plan was to touch down in the Western Alaska hub then swap to a smaller airplane headed to Nunapitchuk for a story on village public safety officers, but the mechanical gods had another idea: an early-morning Alaska Airlines flight turned back to Anchorage due to busted landing gear, and another problem kept mechanics pecking away at an idle replacement airplane for hours.

Monday was done by the time I arrived in Bethel, so Tuesday morning, we headed to the office of the Association of Village Council Presidents, a tribal nonprofit that oversees the state's largest village public safety officer program. AVCP provides services to a land area roughly the size of Oregon and currently employs VPSO officers in 19 communities.

Alvin Jimmie is director of the organization's VPSO program.

"Maybe you could have made it in a plane yesterday," he says. "Maybe not. It was windy."

In any case, Jimmie says he plans a trip upriver to Akiak with his colleague William Kanuk so the two can check on a newly-minted officer who just completed the second tier of training at a state-run academy in Sitka.

The Ford F-150 they drive has plenty of room for a couple extra, so they offer a ride. I sit in the back seat alongside the longest-serving VPSO in the state, Max Olick, who is hitching a ride to his hometown of Kwethluk.

As we drive along the road, the sound of water slapping beneath the ice is occasionally audible in the cab of the truck. Whenever the sun shimmers, branches of golden light glint along cracks that start and end somewhere out of sight.

"How thick is the ice?"

"It's getting thicker now," Jimmie says. "18 inches – maybe two feet."

"What are they doing with those sticks?"

Kanuk explains that some of the clusters of wooden sticks mark ice fishing spots carved and checked daily, while others are put out to mark open water and dangerously thin ice. He says it is rare for vehicles to fall through, but one recently went for an unexpected swim not far from the stretch of road we are traveling.

Flight-related delays and a ride along a soggy river may be the perfect beginning to a trek into rural Alaska to explore why there is a push to allow VPSOs to carry firearms and what it would mean for villages.

Not long after the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlements Act in 1971, with new wealth trickling into villages, regional Native associations like AVCP started asking and answering recurring questions that laid the groundwork for the VPSO program:

Who in remote communities can be counted on during search and rescue missions to organize operations and make sure helpers avoid becoming additional victims?

When someone runs afoul of the law and armed officers are in faraway places, who can make the most of a bad situation until backup arrives?

What if another emergency arises and help is a grounded flight or a mushy river away?

“If a situation arrives, we are ready,” says Michael Hoffman, vice president of AVCP, sitting inside a Bethel conference room.

Hoffman’s family has distant ties to Western Alaska – “all the way back to the beginning, until the end” – and he says the VPSO program provides another service that is often overlooked.

“If a trooper comes in, you have a person that knows the families, that knows everyone living in the villages, someone that knows the language,” Hoffman says.

VIDEO HERE

'THINGS HAVE CHANGED'

While the VPSO program is lauded by many rural community leaders, a recent tragedy left many people wondering why most of the officers are not allowed to carry firearms.

One afternoon last March, the lone VPSO serving Manokotak was fatally shot.

Thomas Madole, 54, was responding to reports of an argument involving a family that escalated when a man slapped his stepfather in the face.

Leroy B. Dick, Jr., the 42-year-old stepson, was reportedly suicidal when Madole was called in to try and diffuse the situation.

Madole brought a baton, handcuffs, pepper spray and a Taser – the standard tools issued to a VPSO – to what proved to be a gunfight. The VPSO made his way to the house in question and knocked on the door and knocked again. He tried to convince Dick to come outside peacefully, to step away without making a bad decision.

Dick eventually stepped outside, and he fired multiple .223-caliber rounds from a rifle as Madole turned his back and tried in vain to get away.

A bullet hit Madole in the head, and others hit his abdomen, chest and thigh. He was dead for hours by the time armed troopers arrived.

The death marked the second time in the history of the program that an officer was killed in the line of duty. Ronald Eugene Zimin, a former Naknek VPSO, was 36-years-old when he was shot dead while responding to a report of domestic violence.

In hearing the stories surrounding the officers’ tragic deaths, a common question arises: Why would a VPSO not have a gun?

Max Olick, the Kwethluk VPSO, has never carried a gun on the job since assuming his role in 1981. And he never much liked the bulletproof vest adorned by most of his colleagues, so it usually hangs somewhere in the community’s public safety building.

“Arming VPSOs, I’m for it, but I’ve got mixed feelings,” Olick says. “Things have changed. The people have changed.

“Maybe it’s time.”

The second half this two-part KTUU.com report will be published at 6 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 20.

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday took testimony on a constitutional amendment to allow state funds go to private schools. Rep. Wes Keller, a Republican from Wasilla, is sponsor of House Joint Resolution 1. He told the committee one of the goals of his bill was to remove from the constitution the anti-Catholic Blaine amendment, which forbids public funds from going to religious and private schools. However, several people said during public testimony that state purpose was a mere diversion from the resolution's true intent, ending the separation of church and state. The committee will take up the bill again at a later date.

The House Judiciary Committee took up a constitutional amendment Wednesday that would allow voters to choose their state attorney general. The proposed amendment sponsored by Chugiak Republican Rep. Bill Stoltze, calls for the direct election of the attorney general. Committee chairman Rep. Wes Keller had three areas of concern with the amendment. He says the proposal doesn't answer if an elected attorney general would be of the same political party as the governor during the same election. He also wonders how an elected attorney general would be removed from office if need be, and what qualifications an individual would have to meet to be a candidate for the office. The committee didn't take any action on the proposal.

(KTUU-TV, 2014)

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski used her annual address to a joint session of the Alaska Legislature to criticize the U.S. Department of the Interior over its rejection of a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

“I am going to be a hell-raiser on this -- I am going to channel my inner Ted Stevens, and we're going to get this road built,” Murkowski told lawmakers Wednesday.

Murkowski is referring to a proposed road connecting the Aleutian communities of King Cove and Cold Bay.

Residents in King Cove told Interior Secretary Sally Jewell during a visit there in August that the road is a life-or-death matter.

Some of them told stories about sick or injured relatives needing medical transport, and how a road through the refuge to the Cold Bay airport would have saved valuable time in treating them.

Jewell rejected the road in December, saying it would jeopardize waterfowl in the refuge.

"She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, 'I've listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,'” said state Rep. Bob Herron (D-Bethel). “You could have heard a pin drop in that gymnasium.”

Herron accompanied Jewell and Murkowski on the visit to King Cove.

"If the people of King Cove believe perhaps rightly so that civil disobedience is what it will take to get a level of attention to this, you're not going to find me standing in the way,” Murkowski told reporters after the speech.

Murkowski also praised lawmakers for having the “courage” to pass an oil tax cut last year that she said promotes investment.

She said the Legislature has taken serious steps to try to boost oil flow through the trans-Alaska pipeline system and it's long past time for the federal government to do the same.

Murkowski said while the Interior Department has sold leases in Arctic waters off Alaska, it hasn't shown it wants development to occur.

Alaska's other U.S. senator, Sen. Mark Begich, is scheduled to address the Legislature early next month.

(KTUU-TV, 2014)

The proposed  1,100-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry Canadian oil to U.S. refineries in the Gulf of Mexico -- but officials in Alaska's resource industry say it won't significantly harm the state's interests.

President Obama has pushed back on the pipeline proposal due to environmental concerns.

The trans-Alaska pipeline transports oil 800 miles across the state, providing hundreds of jobs to Alaskans. Similarly, Keystone XL would create at least 9,000 construction jobs according to project backer TransCanada. 

The federal coordinator for the Alaska gas line projects, Larry Persily, says it's unlikely the Keystone XL pipeline would ever connect to Alaska, because the state's oil primarily supports the West Coast market.

"On the surface of it, it really shouldn't affect Alaska," Persily said. "They're separate markets -- Alaska North Slope crude oil goes to refineries on the West Coast, Puget Sound and California. The Keystone pipeline would be taking Alberta oil to (the) mid-continental U.S., down to the Gulf Coast of the United States."

With or without an Alaska connection, Alaska Support Industry Alliance General Manager Rebecca Logan says it probably won't hurt the state's economy. 

"I think the biggest impact with the Keystone Pipeline being approved has to do with the (National Environmental Policy Act) process," Logan said. "Again, it went through a very rigorous environmental assessment, an established process we have for approving projects -- and that's very pertinent here."

(KTUU-TV, 2014)

This time last year, Chance Cunningham was a correctional officer in Missouri.

Reporter Caslon Hatch, Photojournalist Eric Sowl

Wind energy is a trend that has taken the Lower 48 by storm -- and many Alaskans are hoping it will mean more renewable energy in the Last Frontier.

Chugach Electric Association board members heard comments from the public Wednesday encouraging them to purchase additional wind power on Fire Island from Cook Inlet Region, Inc. -- a request which could see the 11 wind turbines currently installed on the island double to 22.

“That’s clean, long-term reliable energy for Anchorage that we really need to make sure to capitalize on while we can,” said Nick Moe, with the Alaska Center for the Environment.

According to CIRI's Fire Island Wind Project, those 11 added turbines could provide power to more than 6,000 households in Southcentral Alaska. Chugach purchased all of the generated wind power from Fire Island, and started producing power from turbines in 2012.

“That’s long-term flat renewable energy and it could be as long as 40 years into the future and that’s huge to be able to count on that energy being produced,” Moe said.

But renewable energy comes with a price. Chugach pays CIRI $97 for each megawatt-hour of wind power, versus $65 for each megawatt-hour generated by burning natural gas.

“When we did projections for Fire Island wind, depending on what you think the price of gas is going to be without your crystal ball working, we look at seven to potentially 10 years for that can become a wash,” said Janet Reiser, chair of Chugach's board.

Chugach board members say they have tried to be forward thinkers on renewable energy in the past. For now the board will gather data, look at analysis and discuss the first year of generating wind power on the island before determining whether to take on Phase Two of the project.

“It was a learning year for us and I think we’ve improved our ability to regulate and monitor and maximize the wind potential,” Reiser said.

It’s a project many hope will generate more support and eventually generate more power in Alaska.

“Other states have figured this out and it’s about time Alaska comes around as well,” Moe said.

Chugach has a long-term goal to get 90 percent of its energy from renewable resources and 10 percent from fossil fuel -- but officials say there is no specific date for meeting that goal.

A challenge to a controversial abortion initiative passed by voters in 2010 was argued before Alaska's Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The parental notification law requiring doctors to tell a parent before performing an abortion on girls younger than 18 years old was challenged in Superior Court in 2012, but was later ruled constitutional.

Pro-choice groups took their fight to the court hoping the justices will strike down the rule.

Attorney Janet Crepps, who represents the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood says the rule creates an equal protection issue.

"The main issues in this case are whether the law can burden minors seeking abortions and not put the same burdens on minors seeking prenatal care," Crepps said.

Crepps says the rule also creates questions about whether the law advances the state's goals of helping families or protecting minors.

Attorney Kevin Clarkson, who represents sponsors of the initiative says the law doesn't take away a minor's choice and they can benefit from parental involvement.

"It just ensures if she has parents who are fit and loving that they will be engaged that they will know and help her out," Clarkson said.

While many pro-choice advocates argue that not everyone has parents who will be supportive when their child makes a difficult choice, Clarkson says there is a bypass proceeding in court that allows for girls to get around notifying their parents if they do decide to terminate a pregnancy.

"She simply has to explain to the judge how she fits into the exceptions into the law, she's mature enough to make her own decisions, her parents have been abusive or that she's otherwise in a position where having an abortion without notifying her parents is in her best interest," Clarkson said.

Crepps says the process to have a bypass granted doesn't cure the ills of the parental notification law.

"The bypass itself is actually pretty burdensome a minor has to file papers, go to court, talk to a judge about intimate personal issues and so while the bypass has some value it doesn't cure the constitutional problems necessarily," Crepps said.

Both sides anticipate a decision by the Alaska Supreme Court within several months.

Channel 2's Blake Essig promised Tuesday that he would challenge an opponent at the Winter Olympics in Sochi to an ice-climbing duel Wednesday -- see who kept cool under the pressure.

This time last year, Chance Cunningham was a correctional officer in Missouri.

Cunningham was raised in Anchorage, Juneau and in Lower 48 cities, the son of a career U.S. Marshal.

Walking along a gravel road in Akiak, where he has been the VPSO for about six months, Cunningham explains that he first imagined a life in rural Alaska while watching the TV show Alaska State Troopers.

Along with his wife and two young kids, the 25-year-old now lives in the village upriver from Bethel.

He just returned from a 10-week course at a state-run academy in Sitka, which is the second of three tiers of required training for new VPSOs.

While sequestered at the Southeast Alaska facility, Cunningham was among a dozen officers going through a daily fitness regimen, learning hand-to-hand combat and picking up wilderness survival skills.

By the time his training is done, he will be proficient in policing skills, search and rescue efforts, emergency medical services and firefighting.

“Using your mind, being able to talk through situations, that’s also a big part of the training,” Cunningham says.

Now that Cunningham is home, a thousand miles from the training grounds, he says he is again focusing on a key part of the job that is something of a process.

“The best way to really get into a culture, into the community, is to do what they do,” he says. “If they go hunting and you don’t like hunting, you better learn to like hunting if you want them to accept you.

Learning to fit in with a community unlike any place he lived before, gaining the trust of longtime residents, that is a definite key to success for VPSOs drawn to “middle of nowhere Alaska,” as Cunningham calls it, from urban Alaska or the Lower 48.

So Cunningham hunts, and he does whatever else he can to help the community.

“It’s a lot of talking with kids at the school, spending time up at the school, helping out with kids,” he says.

The baton on Cunningham’s belt remains scuff-free, the can of pepper spray is still full and the Taser has only been taken out when a curious kid wonders why he has a weird yellow thing on his belt.

But he knows this season will pass, that he will someday be tested.

“It’s not a question of if,” he says. “It’s a question of when.”

If a day arrives that the tools on Cunningham’s belt are not enough, he says he hopes he is allowed to carry a gun.

“Just for the peace of mind,” he says.

KWETHLUK VPSO INTERVIEW

After an afternoon drive along the Kuskokwim River and a stop in Akiak, William Kanuk heads south along a stretch of river he has never driven before.

Kanuk stops and talks to a man standing outside a truck full of sticks, who explains in Yup’ik that the final stretch of road to Kwethluk could be precarious.

“He says to follow the tracks,” Kanuck tells the passengers.

We make it to Max Olick’s village without incident, and we drive to the public safety building stamped with Olick’s name, a building used by the VPSO and three tribal police officers to serve the community of about 700 residents.

'GETTING SHOT AT THAT TIME WAS IMMINENT'

“Arming VPSOs, I’m for it, but I’ve got mixed feelings,” says Olick, sitting at a desk in his office. “Things have changed. The people have changed.”

Olick loves his community: his wife, the rest of his family, his friends, the fish camp he keeps all summer, the mushing dogs that help him stay busy all winter.

“I know everybody in the village,” he says. “I want to make a safer place for people to live in.”

There are problems that have grown stronger in recent years, Olick says.

“We are hard hit by drugs and alcohol,” he says. “It changes everything.”

Olick is used to doing his job unarmed, but there have been close calls.

One incident he remembers in particular was a standoff. He was confronted by a man wielding a high-powered gun.

“I couldn’t even run, I couldn’t even hide,” Olick says. “Getting shot at that time was imminent.”

“I called the troopers, but they mentioned something about, ‘we’ll be there tomorrow.’”

The situation ended after more than five hours when the man unsuccessfully attempted to shoot himself in the head, a suicide attempt that failed due to the length of the barrel of the gun.

Things could have ended differently: “If I was armed, maybe he would have been shot,” the VPSO says. 

While that may have preserved his own life, a fatal ending would have been unspeakably tragic for Olick and everyone in Kwethluk.

“If I shoot one individual, that’s a person that I know and grew up with, or somebody’s child that I grew up with or one of my relatives,” Olick explains. “It’s going to be pretty hard for me to live with that.”

WARY SUPPORT

Olick, like AVCP, supports House Bill 199, a proposal by Rep. Bryce Edgmon (D-Dillingham) that would give regional Native associations the option of arming VPSOs.

But that does not mean Olick or AVCP want every officer to have a firearm.

Under House Bill 199, the popular proposal making its way through the Alaska Legislature, training would be required and the decision to arm a VPSO would not be made by the state – and that local control is imperative to many rural residents.

Moses Owen is a member of the Akiak Tribal Council, and he says the key is making sure the community knows and trusts their VPSO.

“We have to make sure these individuals are trained, that they will work with the community and that they won’t use the gun as something that will make them bigger than the members of the community here,” Owen says.

Olick agrees.

“Maybe it’s time, but the communities who the VPSOs work for should have a say in this."

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is second of a two-part KTUU.com series on rural perspectives to House Bill 199, which would arm village public safety officers. Part one can be found here.

A federal official told state lawmakers the feds are ready to work on a liquefied natural gas pipeline project but don't want another false start.      Larry Persily is federal coordinator of Alaska gas pipeline projects.      In testimony submitted to the Senate Finance Committee, he said federal agencies would like to know a project has a real shot at making it this time.      He said this time could well be different than past, failed efforts.      He said working in the state's favor is that liquefied natural gas demand is the strongest growth industry for energy in the world.      The state faces a lot of potential competitors but he said it's not an impossible market.      Lawmakers are considering legislation that would move the project into a phase of preliminary engineering and design.

The father of a Pennsylvania woman who with her newlywed husband is charged with killing a man she met through Craigslist says he would support his daughter's execution if she is found guilty.      Sonny Dean of Texas also tells The Daily Item newspaper Wednesday that his 19-year-old daughter, Miranda Barbour, may have been involved in one murder other than her alleged participation in the slaying of Troy LaFerrara.      The 42-year-old man was fatally stabbed Nov. 11 in Sunbury.      Sunbury police accuse Miranda Barbour and her 22-year-old husband, Elytte Barbour, of LaFerrara's killing.      Miranda Barbour's father tells the newspaper that his daughter is a manipulative liar but he doesn't think she's a mass murderer.      She claims she killed at least 22 people.

Police and medics responded just before 3:30 a.m. Thursday to the scene of a fatal South Anchorage car crash.

Police say initial calls about the crash, at the intersection of O'Malley Road and Commodore Drive, came in just after 3:20 a.m.

Police say an SUV was driving westbound on O'Malley when it veered to the right and hit a snow bank. The car rolled “multiple times” and came to a stop at the intersection of Commodore and O'Malley, police said.

“The vehicle lost control and started to roll, coming to a stop in the backyard of a condominium complex,” APD spokesperson Jennifer Castro wrote in a statement.

A resident of that complex told KTUU he awoke just after 3:30 a.m. to the sound of the car crashing through his fence and yard.

Police say three passengers were in the car. Two men ejected from the vehicle. One, a 17-year-old, was declared dead at the scene. The other man, who police said is 18 years old, was transported to a local hospital. As of 6:30 a.m. the second passenger was in critical condition.

A third passenger, a 16-year-old woman, sustained injuries but “was able to get out of the vehicle,” police wrote. She was also receiving care at a hospital as of Thursday morning.

“The male is listed in critical condition and the female is listed in stable condition,” Castro said.

The APD Traffic Investigation Unit is on the scene investigating the incident.

As of 8 a.m. Thursday morning the westbound lane of O’Malley between Lake Otis and New Seward was closed. Police said they hope to reopen the lane shortly.

Commodore Drive remained closed.

Channel 2's Sheila Balistreri, Garrett Turner, and Matthew Smith contributed information to this story.

The good news in a crime report just released by the FBI is that violent crime was down in the first half of 2013 for Anchorage. The bad news for Anchorage was that property crimes spiked during the same period of time.      The Anchorage Daily News says the report shows violent crimes in the categories of murder, robbery and aggravated assault declined by 1.4 percent during the first 6 months of 2013.      However the reports states there was a rise in rape from 145 in 2012 to 199 in 2013. Officials attribute the rise in part to a broader definition of the crime by the FBI.      Property crimes jumped 14.4 percent during the first half of 2013 over 2012. The category includes burglaries, larcenies/thefts, and motor vehicle thefts.