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At the time, Easter Leafa was sitting on the balcony, covered with a blanket and holding a knife. Anchorage Police arrived at the scene after receiving a call for help from family members. Police said the 16-year-old girl did not show her hands as requested, but stood up and walked towards them with a blade.
Two police officers opened fire simultaneously, one using non-lethal foam bullets and the other using real bullets, and Leafa was shot dead two days before she was to start her senior year of high school. American Samoa Her family said she was working to get a better education and was still learning English.
Lifa was one of seven people shot by Anchorage police since May, most recently critically wounded Friday afternoon when police said a homicide suspect opened fire on them. That’s more than double the number the department typically shoots in a year. Four of them were killed.
The incident made Anchorage the latest in a long line of U.S. cities to confront problems with police brutality, and the city’s new mayor apologized to Leafa’s family and promised reforms.
“This cannot become our new normal,” Mayor Suzanne LaFrance said at a news conference following Lifa’s death.
Suspects in six other shootings were reported to have guns, fired at officers or were armed homicide suspects in two cases.
Darrell Evans, the leader of the city’s police union, said in a statement Friday that the unusual surge in police shootings reflects the “chaos facing our city.” Anchorage has seen 20 homicides this year, including 14 in the past few months.
While that total is already close to last year’s 23 with about a third of the year left, it’s roughly in line with Anchorage’s typical homicide totals: 35 in 2019 and 28 in 2022.
At least four of the people shot and killed by police were people of color, which was particularly troubling for minority residents in Anchorage.
Anchorage is one of the most diverse cities in the U.S., with large populations of Asians, Hispanics and Alaska Natives, many of whom come here for military service and stay. More than 100 languages are spoken by students in Anchorage schools, and the U.S. Census Bureau says Anchorage has the four most racially and ethnically diverse communities in the country, based on 2020 statistics.
The police department has tried to increase its diversity over the past decade, but still about seven in 10 officers are white, far more than the city’s population of 291,000, which makes up just over half, census data show.
Lifa’s killing on Aug. 13 prompted several prayer vigils and a march by hundreds of people to Anchorage police headquarters. Participants expressed sadness and anger and confusion about why one officer used live ammunition while another used a less-lethal weapon. The police department offered no explanation.
Tamarivis Saranoa of the Alaska Polynesian Society told The Associated Press that some Pacific Islanders would think twice before asking Anchorage police for help.
“They should have been prepared for this situation,” she said. “They knew what they were going to do, and we as a community were just sitting in our living rooms, trying to get by with our lives. We didn’t want to call for help, and that would be the last time we called for help.”
LaFrance and police Police Chief Sean Case, who took office in July, said they would let an outside agency investigate the Liffa shooting. They also said they would form an advisory committee to let an outside agency review the department’s policies and procedures and make recommendations to reduce the use of force.
Case said he decided upon taking office to review all shootings by Anchorage police over the past 15 years. On Monday, he plans to appoint a captain to oversee all aspects of department training.
The department has been trained in de-escalation techniques. But Lifa’s family told Anchorage TV station KTUU that one of the officers arrived with a gun. A sister called police to report that Lifa had attacked her with a knife. The officers corralled the rest of the family into a bedroom and then approached the teen.
“She’s a minor,” said another sister, Faialofa Dixon. “They should have asked when they came in.”
Dallas attorney James Roberts is representing the family of Kristopher Handy, who in mid-May became the first person killed by Anchorage police this year.
Police initially said Handy was intoxicated when he raised his long gun and shot at officers in the apartment complex parking lot. But this was the first shooting since Anchorage police began wearing body cameras, and video from those cameras and neighbors’ security cameras appeared to show Handy keeping the gun down until officers opened fire.
The state’s Office of Special Investigations ruled the shooting justified, saying Handy was walking toward officers and ignoring orders to drop his weapon. His family filed a wrongful death lawsuit.
“It appears that the officers went in with an intent not to de-escalate the situation but to immediately use their weapons,” Roberts said.
The video of Leafa’s murder has not yet been released.
Evans, president of the Anchorage Police Department Employees Association, said he was frustrated that the mayor apologized so early in the investigation into the shooting.
“We’ve also heard the overly simplistic narrative that ‘six police shootings since May is too many,’ and that this is somehow a reflection of the failures of the police profession,” he wrote. “This overly simplistic narrative simply fails to recognize the severity of each incident.”
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