“November 3, 2019 is a date that will always make me shudder. It was a date that drastically and forever changed me.”
With this sentence, Tasia Giannulis’ victim impact statement begins. A judge read it aloud in Anchorage Superior Court in April before sentencing a man to four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to felony assault charges.
Photo by Paula Dobbyn
“Nothing has been the same since. It was beyond traumatizing,” Tasia’s statement continues.
Tasia’s nightmare involved a man she had been dating, who one night promised to kill her with a crowbar. Later that evening, as she tried to flee, Tasia found herself trapped inside her car with the man outside, smashing the windows of her vehicle with that very crow bar.. Covered in the shattered glass of her windshield, Tasia managed to start the car and escape to safety. The harrowing incident left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, debilitating panic attacks, trouble sleeping and eating.
“Once happy and easygoing, I now find myself feeling angry, hopeless, ashamed, alone, confused, helpless and still so scared. My sense of security and self-confidence were shattered, and I am struggling to move past that date. My closest relationships have suffered greatly, and I have become guarded and distrusting,” Tasia’s victim impact statement continued.
Alaska is often called the nation’s deadliest state for women. According to a 2010 study by the University of Alaska Anchorage, some 59 percent of adult women in Alaska have experienced intimate partner violence, sexual violence or both, in their lifetimes.
When perpetrators are arrested and charges are brought against them, victims often find themselves suddenly immersed in a criminal justice system that feels confusing and overwhelming. That’s the way it felt for Tasia.
But Anchorage police gave Tasia a number to call. It was to the office of Victims for Justice, which provides victims of violent crime statewide with an array of services ranging from crisis intervention to court accompaniment.
Tasia dialed the number and connected with VFJ’s lead advocate, Michelle Evans.
Evans listened and provided guidance and support as the case worked its way through the court system. Already backlogged before Covid, the criminal justice system slowed down even further during the pandemic. The case involving Tasia’s perpetrator reached its conclusion 17 long months after the assault occurred.
But despite the delay, Tasia says VFJ was there for her all along the way.
“To say that Michelle and Victims for Justice has helped me can’t begin to capture their support. Without this organization and the encouragement, guidance and love from Michelle, I would not have had the courage or the strength to do what I needed to do so that this dangerous man was held accountable for the terrible things he did to me. From the moment that I met Michelle, I never doubted for a second that she had my best interests in mind. She answered every worried call, text and email throughout the entire case – start to finish. She spoke to the District Attorney’s office on my behalf and listened in on case hearings when I was too scared to go. She helped me understand and navigate a very complicated and confusing court process,” Tasia said.
Evans suggested her client apply to the Violent Crimes Compensation Board for a therapist specialized to help with severe trauma and PTSD.
“What happened to me that night was life changing, yes, but so was having the support of Michelle and VFJ. I have been able to rise from the darkest night of my life through love, support, hard work, tears and therapy, and I have found my voice. I stood up for myself and he is in jail for what he did to me. They helped me walk through the scariest and most difficult days with my head held high. Today I feel strong, empowered and free. Now I can close that chapter and move on. I am forever grateful that Michelle came into my life when she did. Without her, none of this would have been possible,” Tasia said
Q: Why did you join the board of Victims for Justice?
A: Tory (VFJ executive director Victoria Shanklin) reached out a couple of years ago to the captain of detectives to have a partnership with the detectives so that we could offer and refer victims to Victims for Justice when the case hit the detectives’ desks. At the time that philosophy wasn’t embraced. About a year and a half later I was the patrol captain and she reached out to me and kind of pitched the same concept. So that started my relationship with VFJ. We set up a referral system.
Many, many times I have seen a gap in services to victims. Officers arrive, they do their job, they interview victims, they make an arrest, they provide victims with information. Generally, the least important thing for a victim in the aftermath of a crime is getting a booklet, or getting pages of a booklet read to them about resources. That is not a time when they are listening to that sort of stuff because of the event that caused the police to be called in the first place. And then officers leave and nothing happens with the victims, generally for quite some time. There are certain times when that’s a little different. Certainly, for most VFJ clients they don’t get an immediate response like some of our domestic violence or sexual assault victims do. So, they are kind of left, whether it’s days, weeks or hours, or later, wondering, “what every happened with that case? What am I supposed to do?” Or, “Now I’m out property, or I have these injuries, what do I do?” There’s all these questions. So they go to only number they can think of and that’s the business card of the police officer. And sometimes those cases are now detective cases, or officers are on days off, you know, that case is passed on. They have made an arrest and turned in that paperwork and now the victim is kind of spinning in circles trying to figure out who they can talk to who can actually give them the answer.
So there’s this huge gap. Eventually, once the case starts to go down the prosecution road, then there is more contact with victims, there is more follow-up with prosecutors, VFJ gets involved if the victims reach out. But there can be a big time lag. I’m really interested in seeing how we can decrease that time lag and get as close to a warm hand-off as you can so that at the end of the day, that number on the card that the victim calls is going to be an advocate. Even if the advocate doesn’t know the specifics of the case, at least they understand the process; they understand delays in the system. There are so many questions that can be answered from that perspective. That’s so helpful to the victim. It’s going to start to bring clarity to a very unclear situation.
Q: Why do victims’ rights matter to you from your perspective as a law enforcement officer?
A: When you’re out there handling calls for service and you come into contact with multiple victims every day, you are there to perform a function, and it’s a law enforcement-related function. But when you start to slow down and think about having broader impact, and how you dealt with calls for service and how you interacted with victims, and it’s a fast-paced thing when you’re on patrol. You’re in, you’re out, you go to the next call.
About the time I was promoted to lieutenant, I really started reviewing commendations (i.e. positive comments) that came in to the police department regarding officers interactions with the public, and I would see commendations that would come in from victims. And they would talk about why they were impacted by the officer that they had contact with. I would also see this in dispatch and with our records clerks as well. And it seems almost insignificant when you read it. You read this, what the victim said, and you think, well the officer, the dispatcher, the records clerk didn’t really do much. And you reach out to the employee and you let them know they got this commendation and, even to them, it might seem insignificant. It might have been an insignificant call and it’s not viewed in their mind or the minds of their peers like anything outside of just what they’re supposed to do as an employee of APD. But you really start to understand what type of impact we really have on victims.
You’re in a profession where 98 percent of the people who come into this job, no matter if they are a sworn officer, or a non-sworn member of the police department, they come in to help the public, to give back to the public, to be part of something bigger. They think of that in really big terms and they lose sight of the fact it’s often the small things that mean a lot.
It’s answering the questions of people after they have become a victim of a crime. And feeling like the officer would have given them all day if they had it. That they were listening, that they were taking time for them, that they were empathetic about what they were going through. I think the system as a whole, we need more of that when it comes to victims. The criminal justice is a big machine and sometimes our victims get caught up in it.
Q: What’s an example of how officers can assist victims in the aftermath of a crime?
A: Closing the loop is a term we were using at one time. You might have someone who ended up being in a disturbance between neighbors so there was nothing criminally that we could do. Or a victim of a minor vandalism and the officers would contact the victim and contact the suspect and sometimes make an arrest but they wouldn’t re-contact the victim. But you would also see an officer driving away and then later picking up the phone and contacting the victim to give an update. “Hey, here’s what I did after I left your house and here’s who I contacted. And we actually made an arrest and this was the type of arrest that was made.” And that takes two minutes and it means the world to victims because it provides them information; it provides them closure in many situations. It’s all about communication.
Q: And do you see that as something VFJ helps with?
A: Oh absolutely. Sometimes it’s almost like there is a difference language between the officer and the advocate. And the victim kind of needs to hear that different language. They hear the message differently. Sometimes the message is the same but it is such a great help to have advocates be able to communicate in a way that’s more beneficial to the victims.
Q: Are you involved with any organizations or bodies that make criminal justice policy recommendations?
A: I’m a commissioner on the Alaska Criminal Justice Commission and I’m in my fourth year right now. I came on the commission after Senate Bill 91 was passed. The commission provides recommendations to the Alaska Legislature and we have several subcommittees. I chair the domestic violence subcommittee and I also sit on the victims’ rights subcommittee.
Initially there was no domestic violence working group. I pitched that we start one. I pitched that for several reasons. The first reason is it’s no shock to anyone that our domestic violence rates have been extremely high for decades and that number stays pretty consistent. There are things we have tried around the state to provide better services for victims or provide better prosecution, or things that would potentially help lower those numbers. The other thing with domestic violence is that it’s a very complicated crime.
We’re still kind of responding as a country and here in Alaska in such a simplistic way. The base model that we use is kind of a battered intervention model. Domestic violence is a crime of control and what we know now, 30 years after this philosophy can into being, is that our victims have often also been offenders and offenders have been victims. Everybody has seen it, has witnessed it, has been a part of it. It’s not as simple as one person trying to control another person. Those cases certainly exist without question but it’s a lot more complicated. That was the design of the workgroup: how can we look at holistically look at our victims and offenders. Our victims and offenders in Alaska often get back together at very high proportions before their cases are even resolved.
I also joined the victims’ rights work group. I was part of listening groups where the commission went to various communities around the state and listened to victims and their stories. They were either victims themselves or they were a family member of a victim. They shared how they interacted with the criminal justice system, the police, the courts, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys and victim advocates. Over and over again, the victim advocates were always the highlight of their interaction. So after that I joined the victims’ rights work group because it’s obviously such an important part of what the commission does.
Q: Why do you think Alaska has such high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault?
A: I’ve started to become more outspoken about this. Our Alaska Native population is grossly over-represented, and has been historically, both as victims and as offenders in many crimes, but particularly domestic violence. A lot of the work I’ve been doing for the past three or four years in domestic violence, if you look at the system we have set up, the element that we have missed the boat on is the cultural aspect in our response to Alaska Native victims and offenders. I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but certainly what I have learned in my being an officer for 20 years in Alaska, and growing up here, is that they have a very rich culture, and a very proud culture, when they are in a situation where the response is so different from the culture they were raised in, you’re probably not going to get a great output on the other end. I would say that contributes significantly to our over-representation of Alaska Natives in the criminal justice system.
Setting that aside, Alaska has its up and down with alcohol. We have a lot of alcohol use and misuse and that contributes greatly to the rates of domestic violence. Anecdotally, there is probably a lot more alcohol involved in domestic violence than any other drug. Alcohol is by far more consistently seen as a contributing factor.
The system is just really challenged. You have two people who, let’s say, are married, and now there is a domestic violence incident. Now they are separated. There’s a no contact order. That’s very beneficial and useful and should be in place in many situations. But there are other situations where it’s very challenging. There’s money, there’s housing, there’s childcare and custody, and transportation involved. There’s all these things outside of just the crime that come into play that make it very difficult to overcome, recover and become a real survivor. I think all these things play into the increased numbers.
Q: Is anything in play to try to turn this around as far as recommendations to the Legislature?
A: Our subcommittee has just finished a final draft of the work we’ve done over the last couple of years. We will be sending that off to the commission as a whole and that will move forward as a recommendation to the state. A lot of that work looks at things that have been done in the state of Alaska and across the country that have been effective or not. We have a lot of data from the Alaska court system, 20 years of data from the Anchorage Police Department on domestic violence crimes. So there’s a lot of information, and it’s probably the most comprehensive piece on domestic violence that has ever been written within the state of Alaska. I am hopeful that will be a public document by the end of the year. One of the large recommendations is that comes out of this is a coordinated community response model.
It’s difficult to say to the state Legislature that we want you to pass a bill that says this is a requirement because one of the great things about a coordinated community response is that it depends on the community you’re in because something that works in Anchorage may not work in Bethel. So it’s difficult to draft a law for that. But we sparked a lot of things and I think you’ll see a lot of different approaches.
Here at APD, we applied for a grant last month where we have a lot of partners, UAA, Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Southcentral Foundation, and the focus is to do more of a coordinated community response for our Alaska Native population both for the victim and the offender. If we get that grant, that’s going to be huge. And that all came from the work of the domestic violence work group of the Criminal Justice Commission.
Q: What made you decide to go into law enforcement as a career?
A: I was in the 7th grade when I decided to be a cop. At that time, it was all about getting a job that was exciting. You get to see a lot of things, you get to meet a lot of different people, you get to be involved in a lot of different things. There’s just a lot of excitement in law enforcement.
I started my career with the Los Angeles Police Department in 1998. And then eventually came back home to Alaska. And I’ve done just a ton of things: patrol, supervision, etcetera.
Q: Why do you like it?
A: It’s the people you get to interact with, that’s what keeps me motivated. That’s what makes this job fun. It’s all about the people. Even when we’re arresting people, or when it’s the victim of a crime. Everybody has a story to tell. Whether they love us or hate us, or whether we are insignificant to them. We get to be part of a very unusual piece of people’s lives. We generally get to see them on their worst day and we get to have an impact on that. And I love it. It’s a very challenging career. And it’s always going to be that way. 2020 taught us there are always going to be more challenges.
Q: How has COVID affected your work?
A: Anchorage has been a bit of an anomaly. We have seen a drop in crime pretty much across the board in 2020. Most jurisdictions, particularly outside of Alaska, have seen an increase. In Alaska, we march to the beat of a different drum. I’m sure crime is going to trend up like the rest of the country. We’re often behind the rest of the country. But generally speaking, during the thick of COVID, we couldn’t decrease our response to the public when you’re in this business. So it was a little bit more challenging. You had to be a little more cautious. You didn’t want your workforce to be out sick. But we had no shortage of staffing. We still out answering calls for service and doing our job.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: I have 20 years in so I’m eligible to retire. I’m always looking for an opportunity to bring a little bit of a new direction to law enforcement. We have a lot of employees at APD and in departments across the country that are a new kind of cop. They’re not the officers that were hired simply to make arrests and then turn around and go to the next call for service. That is certainly the culture that I was brought up in. The officers we are hiring now, culturally, are not like that. They want to be part of a bigger solution. They are more thinkers now than they were 20 or 30 years ago and so in the policing world we have to try to create the environment where those kind of employees are going to thrive. Because I really think those employees are going to bring changes to law enforcement that many, many communities want to see. And they’re not going to do it because they’re forced to do it from some third party, be it legislation or a federal consent decree, they’re going to do it because those are the kind of individuals they are. And that’s the best way to bring change or modifications to policing, from the inside out.
As COVID-19 cases increase in Alaska, courts have again suspended jury trials through the end of August. In Anchorage, they’re on hold until at least August 27, 2020. A list of locations and dates of suspension is here.
Given the backlog in court cases since the pandemic began, Victims for Justice decided to check in with Anchorage District Attorney Brittany Dunlop about the impact on victims of violent crime.
Q: How backed-up are courts in Anchorage these days compared to pre-COVID times?
A: How backed up are Anchorage courts is a difficult question. Many hearings have been taking place throughout the pandemic. We have been charging cases in a normal fashion, as they are arrested or referred from police agencies and attending their initial arraignments. With some interruptions due to court closures, we have been routinely presenting cases to the grand jury. We have also been handling other regular pre-trial hearings initially telephonically, and finally more recently in person. In context, the vast majority of our cases resolve by plea agreement, not by trial. In 2019 we filed roughly 3500 felony cases in Anchorage. About 1500 were indicted by the grand jury. Only 100 or so saw a jury trial. So, halting jury trials in theory should not impact our day-to-day work that much. However, the prospect or threat of jury trial is often what induces plea agreements. Throughout the pandemic defense lawyers have had a difficult time communicating with their clients to relay plea offers. Many more defendants than normal are out of custody due to COVID concerns prompting release by the court, and for those that were in custody, the jails necessarily had tight COVID restrictions on visitation. Those complications, coupled with the halting of jury trials, means that we have not seen the level of plea agreements that we normally would see, leading to a fairly substantial backlog.
Numerous orders have been issued since March of 2020. Those orders affect everything from the tolling of speedy trial rights, to the suspension of trials, and the regulation of health and safety procedures within the court system. Some of the orders have come from the Supreme Court, others from the local presiding judge. They can all be found on the court system’s website.
Q: How are these delays affecting victims of violent crime in terms of their ability to access justice?
A: Cases are not resolving at the same rate we would normally see, either through plea agreement or trial. This can be frustrating for all parties, especially victims and witnesses who are looking for closure to traumatic events. Victims should feel empowered to call in to court and appear telephonically for any hearing that they wish so they can be kept appraised of what developments are occurring in their case. Victims can exercise their rights to be heard on bail, delays and sentencing telephonically.
Q: If someone loses a family member to homicide in Anchorage, how long on average would it take from the time of the crime until the matter goes to trial? How has this time frame changed since the pandemic? What about for other violent crimes (e.g. assault, arson, hit and runs, etc.)
A: By a rough estimate I would say that homicides or serious violent crimes normally resolve by plea agreement 9-18 months after an event. If a plea agreement can’t be reached, and a case is going to go to trial, that timeframe can be longer, generally 1-3 years. Many factors can impact how long it takes to get a case to trial. Those factors include the complexity of the case, the degree of pre-trial litigation, the number of co-defendants, or whether the defendant changes counsel partway through the proceedings. Without trials for over a year, some delay can necessarily be expected. However, I am hopeful that the court will prioritize more serious offenses for trial going forward, and that counsel has been working diligently on pre-trial matters throughout the pandemic so the delay is not extreme.
Q: What are you telling victims about the court delays in terms of what they can expect?
A: We are asking people to be patient. While getting cases to trial in a timely manner is definitely a priority, we are also prioritizing the health and safety of parties, witnesses, jurors and everyone else involved in the court process. There are a number of legal challenges that exist in trying a case during a pandemic. For example, things that seem as simple as whether witnesses are required to wear masks, or if the courtroom is closed to in person spectators could pose legal challenges to a case down the road. After all, a juror has to be able to evaluate the credibility of witnesses, which includes seeing their facial expressions, and a defendant has a constitutional right to a public proceeding. So, simple or obvious solutions to getting court back up and running full speed have potential to jeopardize a case in the future.
I would emphasize to any case parties, that while the delay is certainly frustrating, it is our utmost priority to make sure that when we obtain convictions, it is done so in a constitutionally valid manner, that will withstand future appellate review. It is all a balancing act, so we are asking for grace as we try and get the best result possible for the safety of the community. Victims should know that we are doing our very best to move cases, prioritizing those that are the most serious and have unique timing or other issues. As soon as the court opened for trial, we immediately scheduled and completed a dozen trials, which was as many as the court could accommodate. We started with some class B and C felonies, because that was what the initial court order permitted, but were also able to try one sexual assault case. We are hopeful that we will try more serious cases soon. Many of the scheduling issues are out of our hands, and we are responding as best as we can to new court orders as they are issued.
Q: Are other aspects of your work being affected by the pandemic?
A: The District Attorney’s Office has been affected in a similar manner to many professional offices. Unlike restaurants, bars or other businesses that were shuttered completely, we were able to continue our work, just in a modified fashion. Because new cases continued to need to be charged daily, we quickly adapted to minimize the number of people physically in the office, transitioning to telework for what could be done remotely. Court hearings happened throughout the pandemic telephonically and by videoconference. For the past several months we have had the vast majority of our employees physically back in the office, in a “business-as-usual” type mode, but are eager for things at the court system to return to in person as soon as safely possible.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
A: Please don’t hesitate to call our office if you have specific questions about your case, 907-269-6300. Our mission remains to seek justice and promote public safety through every case that comes before our office. We are always happy to answer questions or take input from victims and witnesses regarding their cases.
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