Tears, hugs and talk about what’s next dominated demonstrations this weekend honoring Easter Leafa, the 16-year-old who was shot and killed by Anchorage police earlier in the week. Through the heartbreak, community leaders were focused on moving the city forward, together.
“This is not Chicago. This is not New York. This is not Detroit. This is Anchorage,” said Pastor Adrienne Richardson at a vigil held on the Anchorage park strip. “I don’t know why some of you are here. But I remain here because I believe Anchorage is a safe place for people of all colors, denominations and cultures.”
Organized by members of the faith community, the demonstration was one of several held over the weekend honoring the 16-year-old who had moved with her family from America Samoa to Anchorage this summer. On the day of the vigil, she would have started her junior year of high school. The overriding message was to not only grapple with the loss but also take meaningful steps to improve policing in the city.
The shooting is the sixth by police this year, and the fourth that ended with a death. In many cases, community members have questioned the police’s quick use of deadly force and whether less-than-lethal force or other non-violent de-escalation techniques could have been used instead.
At the park strip vigil, Rev. Patricia Wilson-Cone called on the attendees to do more than just pray for the city and its residents. She called on the people of Anchorage to get to know each other better and break down the boundaries that lead to distrust and tension.
“This is the sixth shooting, she was 16 years young, 16 years old … 16 years with her parents, 16 years with her siblings, 16 years in Samoa and moved here to Anchorage for a better life, for a better education,” she said. “She will not enjoy that here in Anchorage, Alaska. The question, my friends, is will you enjoy that life? Will your children enjoy that life? What will you do? What will I do? … We can pray, this is all good, but prayer is an action word, and we all need to all get our lives better together.”
At a march attended by hundreds on Saturday, Rev. Samuel Fiu Unutoa, CEO of the Samoan Tribal Council of Alaska, made a similar pledge to work with the city and break through whatever barriers there are to safe policing for the city.
“Samoans don’t have protests in their culture,” he said, according to a report by the Anchorage Daily News. “Samoans are a warrior tribe, we don’t protest, we fight … but we also know how not to fight by sitting down and talking together … and that’s what we are doing. We are going to talk today. We are going to talk tomorrow. We are going to talk every day with our city and let them know who we are and how we are as a tribe so they can help us and that they can understand us.”
So far, the city has been responsive to the community. Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance and Police Chief Sean Case made police reform a top priority after she took office, which included setting out a 45-day timeline to release body-worn camera footage. The two spoke at the weekend march, pledging to work on reforming policing in the city and connect better with the Samoan community.
“Over the last week, I’ve got to know a lot more about the Samoan culture, and I just want to say how much I appreciate that everybody’s gathering here today to honor Easter Leafa and to start that healing process together as a community,” Case said, according to media reports. “This community is a close-knit community. I know how the church plays a role, and it just means a lot as the chief of police to come together to take this time and support the family and support each other and try to move forward together.”
Following the shooting last week, LaFrance and Case announced several policing reforms that have been in the works since July. That includes an independent review of the city’s policing policies, training and management that’s aimed at making interactions with the police safer. The city has also committed to forming a community advisory panel and making internal changes to focus more on de-escalation techniques.
They’ve also promised to launch a first-of-its-kind investigation of the Aug. 13 shooting by an outside party. Currently, police shootings are investigated by the state Office of Special Prosecutions, which has found the use of deadly force was justified in every police shooting that it’s completed its review of. However, the state has recently filed charges against two Troopers who brutally beat a man they had wrongly identified. On Monday, it also charged a former Bethel police officer for assaulting a man during a traffic stop.
“We cannot and we will not accept this as a new normal in Anchorage,” said Mayor LaFrance in a prepared statement accompanying the policy announcements. “We lost a young person in our community who should have been starting her first day of school today. We cannot take back the pain associated with this loss, but we can do everything in our power to make sure this doesn’t happen again in Anchorage.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
