EDITORIAL: What the video of the police shooting of Easter Leafa revealed

The mistake officers made immediately before their fatal shooting of 16-year-old Easter Leafa was simple but extremely consequential. Anchorage Police Department officers, responding to a call about Leafa carrying a knife and threatening her sister, had managed the situation reasonably well — almost until the last moment. They had responded to a crowded apartment, and despite some factors that led to a higher-stress situation than was optimal (the introduction of drawn guns to an already high-tension environment, a substantial language barrier between officers and Leafa’s family), the officers had located Leafa moved the apartment’s other occupants away from potential danger.

But then, inexplicably — with Leafa sitting passively and safely isolated on the apartment’s outdoor deck — the officers did something that led to the shooting, and Leafa’s subsequent death, less than a minute later.

They opened the door to the deck and began issuing commands to Leafa, at once removing the barrier that was safely isolating her and barking orders that only served to escalate the situation. Just one minute after an APD officer opened the door, Leafa stood up and moved to re-enter the apartment, not acknowledging the shouted orders to drop the kitchen knife she was holding — and was immediately shot several times by police.

This past week, the Alaska Office of Special Prosecutions found that officers had not broken the law in their response and their shooting of Leafa, and the footage released by APD bears this out — although there were multiple failure points where choices could have been made differently to prevent the shooting while still protecting the public and responding officers. Why, for instance, weren’t less-lethal options such as Tasers or beanbag rounds deployed before lethal force, rather than simultaneously? Why, when confronting a confined teenager in clear mental distress, was the first response to issue orders threatening injury or death rather than talk calmly and try to de-escalate Leafa’s mental state? And, most crucially, why did the officer intentionally turn a scene that was made safe by the presence of a closed (and lockable) door into one where a fatal outcome resulted so quickly?

These errors of judgment, importantly, are not illegal — the Office of Special Prosecutions is correct that nothing in Alaska law prohibits the actions the officers took. And the right to self-defense in a dangerous situation is also important and necessary for police to do their jobs effectively. But for officers to not understand how they were transforming a tenuous but safe scene into one that resulted in an entirely preventable death is a critical oversight and one that should result in their permanent removal from the potential for facing such a scene again, whether via administrative reassignment or dismissal from the force. Because without accountability for such serious errors, we send the message that such actions are permissible — and we do nothing to prevent them from occurring again in the future.

Policing is a very difficult job, but it is ultimately a job and one in which people can and should face discipline for poor performance. In the private sector, people are fired for administrative screw-ups or even showing up to work late. For an officer, making a mistake that defies common sense and results in a death ought to also have real consequences.

Leafa’s shooting is also one of the first major incidents that bears out the worth of APD’s long-delayed body-worn cameras as an important transparency tool. In addition to the slickly edited format that the department insists is crucial to provide context (i.e. the department’s perspective) on what took place, APD also released the unedited footage, which is commendable. The presence of real-time imagery from the incident is helpful for Anchorage residents to better judge for themselves whether police statements comport with what the video shows. It’s not perfect, but it’s a valuable asset — and one that doesn’t always work against officers, as just-released footage from a harrowing shooting incident on the Parks Highway showed.

The mistakes surrounding the police shooting of Easter Leafa were not illegal, but they were obvious and preventable, and we should expect better of the officers who have sworn to protect us. They should expect better from each other. APD should reform its policies to include serious consequences for fundamental judgment errors like the ones in Leafa’s case.