The Midtown Walmart, located on A Street and Benson, has long been a magnet for Anchorage’s vagrant and homeless population. An investigation by the Landmine has revealed that those problems have resulted in thousands of calls to the Anchorage Police Department (APD) over a two-year period.   

In October, the store was shut down after a man was shot and killed in the middle of the day. It’s common to see tents and people partying and drinking on the sidewalk of A Street not far from the entrance of the store. 

Walking around in the parking lot or inside the store can feel more like being in a mental institution than shopping in the middle of Alaska’s largest city. 

In September, the Landmine received a tip that Walmart management was threatening to close the store due to theft and constant disruption from vagrants. Walmart corporate later told the Landmine there are no plans to close the store. However, last month several Walmart executives were in town and met with city officials. It’s not clear why they were in town, but it doesn’t take a genius to assume it had something to do with the problems their store faces on a daily basis. 

I started to wonder just how many police calls the Midtown Walmart generates. It turns out that question is easier asked than answered.

On September 24, I submitted the following records request through the APD records portal:

I would like a list of all the calls made from the Walmart on A Street (3101 A St, Anchorage, AK 99503) and a list of any and all fines they have been issued for excessive use of calling APD during the time frame requested.

Six weeks later APD informed me that payment was needed for the requested records. I paid them the $63.10 they requested. 

A week later, on November 11, I received a 67-page PDF showing more than 2,000 calls for service to APD from the Midtown Walmart between 9/1/2023 and 9/24/2025. Calls included things like assault, shoplifting, harassment, trespassing, robbery, disorderly conduct, and many more. But the PDF sent to me was hard to sort or convert to Excel. 

I decided to call APD’s records center for some help. After being on hold for almost 30 minutes, I was told what I was asking for was too complicated and that I would need to come in and talk to someone.

I had a friend help me get the data into Excel. The format made it difficult, but it showed 2,244 calls for service were made over the two-year span. That averages to three calls per day.

I reached out to Gina Romero, APD’s director of community relations, to see if the data sort was correct. After a lot of back and forth over a three-day period, she said the location had 1,766 calls between 9/1/2023 and 11/15/2025 (I asked her to expand that dates from when I sent in my original request in September).

She sent me a cleaner Excel file, which shows the data could be obtained in days rather than the nearly two months it took me to get the raw data. 

Romero explained the initial data I received was “unanalyzed” and that “any APD initiated calls to that area are also taken out.”

When asked why officer initiated calls were removed, Romero said, “Those are initiated by officers for a variety of reasons. Those are still recorded in the data but are not a true snapshot of Calls for Service to the area which is why we pulled them out.” 

Romero says APD has partnered with local businesses to help reduce crime. She told the Landmine, “Stopping theft at the source is key to reducing crime throughout the community and this will continue to be a focus in 2026. This has resulted in more than 60 people charged, with several of those chronic offenders. Additionally, the detail has helped to recover stolen property resulting in a total loss recover of at least $58,000 so far. The retail theft detail began in late September and will go through December 31. As mentioned, APD will continue to focus on retail theft in 2026.”

It’s unclear how that is going. A visit to the Midtown Walmart today showed multiple items under lock and key including nearly all electronics, batteries, soap, shampoo, and most personal care products. There were also multiple vagrants spotted in the store, the parking lot, and on the street.