Police body cam footage of deadly Handy shooting released, family upset

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Previously unseen body-worn camera footage of the deadly shooting of Kristopher Handy earlier this year was released Wednesday afternoon by the Anchorage Police Department, hours after the police chief explained what was in the video.

The video — which was edited and narrated by police department officials, including APD Chief Sean Case — was posted on the APD YouTube page. The department did not provide Alaska’s News Source with the raw video upon request.

The new video shows multiple angles of the shooting that killed the 34-year-old Anchorage man in the early morning hours of May 13, 2024.

The four officers involved in the shooting were exonerated Wednesday by the Office of Special Prosecutions, leading to reaction from the family of Handy. A review by the office said they were “legally justified” for shooting Handy, detailing in the report how the officers feared that Handy would shoot them as he approached them outside his apartment complex.

Handy’s parents were not happy with the version of the footage released by police, and are asking the department to release a full, unedited version of the video it received, instead of the edited version that APD released Wednesday afternoon.

Handy’s parents declined an interview but released a statement through their attorney, James Roberts:

In response to Alaska’s News Source requests for comment, the police department said that it “acknowledges that this is a difficult time for the family of Kristopher Handy and does not expect the family to be content with everything that has happened so far.”

APD also refuted claims by the Handy family that Chief Sean Case is refusing to release the full, unedited video of the shooting to the family.

“Video footage of an incident is evidence in a case and requests for evidence can be submitted online through a Records Request,” an APD spokesperson said.

Roberts, who also runs the Civil Rights Department at Palmer Perlstein Attorney & Counselors, says the shooting is “terrifying” considering the officers shot someone who he said was not a threat. He says the officers did not attempt to de-escalate the situation or speak with him, but rather “they immediately took an aggressive stance” and simply fired at him when his hands and gun were pointed down.

“Seeing it from the officer’s perspectives, seeing that it was clear that he wasn’t raising that gun,” Roberts said. “It’s shocking and it’s scary that they weren’t prosecuted for this.”

Roberts argues that Handy was not putting anyone else’s life in danger the moment he was shot.

“They don’t get to argue self defense, or defense of others — they just shot and killed someone, that’s murder,” Roberts said. “The fact that they’ve decided not to prosecute, not to bring criminal charges against these officers, that should be scary to everyone who lives in Anchorage, that the officers can do whatever they want.”

Harmony Stitt, Handy’s fiancée, echoed the call for an unedited version of all the video police received. Stitt was disappointed with the outcome and said she felt the edited APD version of the video didn’t tell the whole story.

Stitt also said the final report failed to include a statement from a neighbor that disputed many of the report’s findings. That neighbor, Virginia Miller, posted security video taken from her second-story apartment to Facebook to counter an original claim that Handy raised his gun toward officers.

“I never saw him raise the gun, I never saw him charging to the officers, I never felt like anyone of us were in imminent danger until officers started shooting towards our full apartment building,” Miller said.

Mike Kramer, the lawyer representing Stitt, had concerns about why the APD footage released was edited so heavily.

“It was a very polished PR piece,” Kramer said. “It wasn’t transparency and full disclosure of what happened that night.”

Both Kramer and Stitt question why certain camera angles were blurred out, why some videos pixelated Handy before he was shot, and why there were only three body cameras operating when there were eight officers present.

Kramer reached out to the city attorney with questions on Wednesday but said he had not heard back as of Wednesday afternoon.

The video lacks a chronological order of events, and even appears to show who shot first, Kramer said, which the released footage doesn’t answer.

There was a K-9 on scene, which officers informed Handy of, but Kramer questions why they say that if they just skipped to using lethal weapons.

“[It’s] really disappointing that now, that’s the standard for police shootings in Alaska, apparently, is that as long as an officer can say, ‘I believed my life was in danger,’ it doesn’t require someone to actually point a gun at anybody,” Kramer said. “You just have to have a gun in your hand, apparently.”

It also concerns Kramer heavily that so many bullets were discharged into the building behind Handy, which was filled with innocent occupants. Although the report doesn’t detail how many bullets were shot, there were 10 bullet wounds left in Handy, according to the autopsy report.

“At this point ... we need transparency,” Kramer said. “We know you have video, let’s see what happened because we don’t believe what the chief told us the day it happened, and for good reason — the chief told us a lie.”

Kramer claims Handy’s gun was inoperable, saying that the firing pin had been removed from the gun. Although there was a question as to if Handy was suicidal, there’s no objective evidence pointing to that, according to Kramer.

Roberts said that the Handy family wants to watch the unedited, unredacted video from APD, which is why they have chosen to not watch the released version yet. He also said the police chief has refused to turn the unedited footage to the family, despite administrative orders to do so.

Roberts said he handles police shootings all over the country, but the way APD edited the released footage seems to show their “narrative” of what happened.

“It seemed to be done in a persuasive manner to make it look like the officers were justified in shooting, when that simply wasn’t the case,” Roberts said.

Roberts has concerns that the officers involved in the shooting are still operating on the streets, despite a series of officer-involved shootings in a short span of time.

The family will be filing a civil lawsuit or a federal complaint, Roberts said, in the case they believe that justice is not served.

“They’re never going to get their son back, their father back,” Roberts said. “But they want to see as much justice as could possibly be had, which right now, that’s none.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with new information.

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