Fatal police shooting of teen angers Anchorage residents

Easter Leafa was sitting under a blanket on her balcony with a knife when Anchorage police arrived, responding to a plea for help from her family. Instead of showing her hands as ordered, they said, the 16-year-old stood up and approached them with the knife.

Two officers opened fire simultaneously, one with a less-lethal foam projectile and the other with live bullets, killing her two days before she was set to start her junior year of high school on Easter. She had recently moved from American Samoa to pursue a better education and was still learning English, her family said.

Easter was among seven people shot by Anchorage police since May, the most recent being a homicide suspect who was critically wounded after officers said he opened fire on them Friday afternoon. That’s more than double the number of people the department typically shoots in a year. Four of the wounded were killed.

The wave has made Anchorage the latest in a long line of U.S. cities grappling with police use of force and prompted an apology to Easter’s family and promises of reform from the city’s new mayor.

“This cannot be our new normal,” Mayor Suzanne LaFrance said at a news conference after Leafa’s death.

The other six shootings involved suspects who allegedly had firearms, fired at police or, in two cases, were armed homicide suspects.

The head of the city’s police union, Darrell Evans, suggested in a statement Friday that the unusual rise in officer-involved shootings reflected “the chaos our city is facing.” There have been 20 homicides in Anchorage this year, 14 of them in recent months.

While that total is already approaching last year’s 23 with about a third of the year still to go, it’s roughly in line with Anchorage’s typical homicide totals: There were 35 in 2019 and 28 in 2022.

At least four of those shot by police were people of color, and that has particularly shaken minority residents in Anchorage.

The city is one of the most diverse in the United States, with large Asian, Latino and Alaska Native populations, including many who came to serve in the military and stayed. Students in Anchorage schools speak more than 100 languages, and according to the U.S. Census, Anchorage had the four most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the country after the 2020 count.

The police department has tried to increase its diversity over the past decade, but still 7 in 10 officers are white — far more than the city’s population of 291,000, which is just over half white, according to census data.

Easter’s Aug. 13 killing sparked several prayer vigils, as well as a march outside Anchorage police headquarters that drew hundreds of people. Participants expressed grief and anger, as well as bewilderment that one officer used live ammunition while the other had a less-lethal option. The police department has offered no explanation.

Tammalivis Salanoa of the Alaska Polynesian Association told the Associated Press that some members of the Pacific Islander community will think twice before calling Anchorage police for help.

“They should be prepared for these kinds of circumstances,” he said. “They knew what they were up against, whereas we as a community are sitting in our living rooms, trying to live our lives. We don’t expect to call for help and have that be the last call we make.”

LaFrance and Police Chief Sean Case, who took office in July, said they would hire an outside entity to investigate Leafa’s shooting. They said they would also establish an advisory committee and hire an outside entity to audit the department’s policies and procedures and recommend practices to reduce the use of force.

Case said when he became chief he decided to have all Anchorage police shootings from the past 15 years reviewed. On Monday, he plans to name a captain to oversee all aspects of the department’s training.

The department already trains in de-escalation techniques, but Easter’s family told Anchorage television station KTUU that one of the officers arrived with his gun drawn. A sister had called police to report that Easter had attacked her with the knife. Officers isolated the rest of the family in a bedroom before approaching the teen.

“She was a minor,” said Faialofa Dixon, another sister. “They should have asked questions 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 officers this year.

Police initially said officers shot Handy, who was very intoxicated, when he raised a long gun toward them in the parking lot of an apartment complex. But the shooting was the first since Anchorage police began using body cameras, and video taken by those cameras and a neighbor’s security camera appeared to show Handy holding the gun down before police began shooting.

The state Bureau of Special Investigations ruled the shooting justified, saying Handy walked toward officers and ignored orders to drop his gun. His family filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

“It appears these officers are coming in, not with the idea of ​​calming the situation, but with the idea of ​​using their weapons immediately,” Roberts said.

The video of Easter’s murder has not been released.

Evans, president of the Anchorage Police Department Employees Association, said he was dismayed that the mayor apologized when the investigation into the shooting had barely begun.

“We have also heard the simplistic assertion that ‘six officer-involved shootings since May is too many’ and how that somehow reflects a failure solely of the police profession,” he wrote. “That level of simplification does nothing to acknowledge the weight of each of those incidents.”

Thiessen writes for the Associated Press.