ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Easter Leafa was sitting on her balcony under a blanket with a knife when Anchorage police responded to a call for help from her family. Instead of showing her hands as they were instructed to do, the 16-year-old girl stood up and walked toward them with the blade.

Two police officers opened fire simultaneously, one with a non-lethal foam bullet and the other with real bullets, killing Leafa two days before she was due to start 11th grade in high school. She had recently moved from American Samoa to get a better education and was still learning English, her family said.

Leafa was one of seven people shot by Anchorage police since May. Most recently, a murder suspect was seriously injured after police said he opened fire on them Friday afternoon. That’s more than twice the number of people police usually shoot in a year. Four of the suspects were killed.

Anchorage is the latest in a long list of American cities grappling with police use of force. The city’s new mayor apologized to Leafa’s family and promised reforms.

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

The other six shootings involved suspects who reportedly possessed firearms, fired at police, or, in two cases, were armed murder suspects.

The head of the city’s police union, Darrell Evans, said in a statement Friday that the unusual increase in police shootings reflects “the chaos our city is facing.” Anchorage has seen 20 murders this year, 14 of them in the last few months.

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

At least four of those shot by police were people of color, which has particularly shocked minorities in Anchorage.

The city is one of the most diverse in the U.S., with large populations of Asians, Hispanics, and Alaska Natives, including many who came and stayed to serve in the military. In Anchorage’s schools, over 100 languages ​​are spoken by students, and according to the U.S. Census, Anchorage has the four most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the country as of the 2020 count.

Although the police force has tried to increase its diversity over the past decade, seven out of 10 officers are still white. That’s significantly more than the city’s population of 291,000, which is just over half white, according to census data.

Leafa’s killing on August 13 prompted several vigils and a march at Anchorage Police Headquarters attended by hundreds of people. Participants expressed grief and anger, but also incomprehension about why one officer used live ammunition while the other had a less lethal alternative. Police have not issued a statement.

Tammalivis Salanoa of the Polynesian Association of Alaska told the Associated Press that some in the Pacific island community would think twice before calling Anchorage police for help.

“They should have been prepared for this kind of circumstance,” she said. “They knew what they were getting into, while we as a community are just sitting in our living rooms trying to live our lives. We don’t expect that we’re going to call for help and have it be the last call we ever make.”

LaFrance and Police Chief Sean Case, who both took office in July, said they would have an outside agency investigate the Leafa shooting. They also said they would establish an advisory committee and have an outside party review the department’s policies and procedures and recommend measures to reduce the use of force.

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

The department already trains de-escalation techniques. But Leafa’s family told Anchorage television station KTUU that one of the officers arrived with a gun drawn. A sister had called police and reported that Leafa had attacked her with a knife. Officers locked the rest of the family in a bedroom before approaching the teenager.

“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 was the first person this year to be killed by police officers in Anchorage in mid-May.

Police initially said officers shot Handy, who was heavily intoxicated, when he pointed a long gun at them in the parking lot of an apartment complex. But the shooting was the first since Anchorage police began wearing body cameras, and videos from those cameras and a neighbor’s security camera appeared to show Handy holding the gun lowered before police began shooting.

The state’s Office of Special Investigations found the shooting justified. Handy approached officers and ignored orders to drop the weapon. His family filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

“It just seems like these officers are not intervening with the mindset of de-escalating the situation, but with the mindset of immediately deploying their weapons,” Roberts said.

The video of Leafa’s killing was not released.

Evans, president of the Anchorage Police Department Employees Association, said he was dismayed that the mayor apologized even though the investigation into the shooting had only just begun.

“We have also heard the simplistic statement that ‘six officer-involved shootings since May is way too many’ and that somehow this just reflects a failure of the police profession,” he wrote. “This simplification does nothing to recognize the significance of each of these incidents.”