Published Mar 28, 2023 by Hope McKenney, KBBI - Homer About 80 women and girls came from across the Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage and even Palmer to take the department’s four-hour self-defense course last October. Training included lessons on maintaining situational awareness, like not being plugged into a phone in potentially unsafe spaces, and breaking from an attacker’s grasp.
Police say such techniques are meant to empower women to feel safe in a state that’s long ranked at or near the top in the nation for rates of domestic violence and sexual assault.
A 2020 survey from the Alaska Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center estimated that nearly 58% of Alaska women have experienced intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or both during their lifetime.
Browning said the department is training women, in particular, since they’re the primary victims of isolated incidents of violence.
“I think it’s important to have a woman-only class and men who are positive reinforcing instructors,” he said. “Some of the feedback we got in the last class was that it was really good to practice on women, but it was even better to be able to try it on a man and see how that feels, with some positive coaching and reinforcement.”
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