After summer of protest and rage, how can Sacramento change to treat all equally?
Sacramento has faced a summer of rage.
“Rage and rage and rage,” said Asantewaa Boykin, a registered nurse and co-founder of the activist group Anti Police-Terror Project.
Since the end of May, protesters have demanded change, marching in anguish with the revelation of video loops of police maiming and killing unarmed Black and brown people.
Thousands of residents flooded streets and parks this summer, calling for seismic shifts beyond police reform to tackle systemic changes. Sacramento is still in a state of reckoning, joining the national demands fanned, in recent months, by more Black people dying at the hands of police. Protesters said their names — Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Daniel Prude.
Sacramento has also faced this pain. Stephon Clark was shot and killed by police officers in his grandmother’s backyard in Meadowview. Chad Irwin, under the influence and having previously expressed suicidal thoughts, was shot and killed outside his Citrus Heights home. Nandi Cain Jr. was beaten by an officer for apparently jaywalking in Del Paso Heights. Mikel McIntyre, in the midst of a mental health crisis, was shot in the back as he ran from deputies along Highway 50.
And, in the protests, Dayshawn McHolder, a teenager, was shot in the face with a rubber bullet, and was cited for assault while recovering in a hospital bed.
New policy ideas have arisen, stopgaps have passed in piecemeal, others have been rejected, and some have never been considered at all.
After the summer of anger, what follows?
Black Lives Matter activists, public health professionals, environmentalists, civil rights lawyers, housing advocates, school teachers, policy wonks and everyday residents are asking elected officials and their fellow neighbors to imagine a society that invests in people to break cycles of racism and poverty and disenfranchisement.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said he wants “systemic change” and acknowledged current reforms are not enough. But the City Council and Board of Supervisors have shown little interest in removing money from the police and sheriff’s department, and the law enforcement unions continue to carry enormous clout in local government.
There are contractual obligations to honor, and funding streams already mandated and accounted for by the state and federal governments, said county board chair Supervisor Phil Serna. The county needs to improve conditions at its jails, but it can’t do that without spending money.
And though the county has the power to stem funding to the Sheriff’s Office, it doesn’t have control over how Sheriff Scott Jones, who is an elected official, spends those dollars.
“If I cut money out of the Sheriff’s budget, what’s not to say the Sheriff would turn around and cut the Sheriff Homeless Outreach Team?” said Supervisor Patrick Kennedy.
Demands for justice, equity
Those who see demands for racial justice and accountability as extreme likely have not fully grasped the life-and-death circumstances that preceded the calls, Boykin said. She said they are are feeling desperate and tired.
The desires extend beyond police matters. Advocates wish to pursue:
- Affordable homes for renters, regardless of their income, without discrimination, to weather a lost paycheck.
- Help for local minority-owned businesses to keep workers employed because they receive loans in times of trouble.
- An end to an imbalance in suspensions, so Black children can learn in the classroom, rather than being suspended and punished more harshly than their peers.
- Trees for all Sacramento, to earn its nickname for all its neighborhoods, not just its wealthiest and healthiest.
“What if we think of public safety as everyone being housed? Everyone having healthcare? People having enough food to eat?” said Liz Blum, of the activist group Decarcerate Sacramento.
The call to “defund” a police department or sheriff’s office has become a political lightning rod, vague in its simplicity and divisive to some in Sacramento.
“I have a good read on where the majority of the people are,” Steinberg said. He said they are decidedly against reducing law enforcement funding.
Everyone wants a safer community, but how Sacramento gets is debated. Law enforcement and incarceration is “what we turn to when everything else has failed,” said Kiran Savage-Sangwan, a member of the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission.
Savage-Sangwan said the movement to defund police is a call for a community’s priorities and values to be expressed in how local government spends taxpayer money, and to shift money toward investments that ensure “we don’t keep failing people over and over.”
Police reform, better healthcare, more jobs
Studies have found that improving access to healthcare, job opportunities, stable housing and other neighborhood social services can all decrease crime, while tangibly improving a person’s safety and quality of life.
Evidence also shows increasing the number of officers in a police department can reduce crime and build meaningful relationships and trust with community members. Sacramento police leaders have lamented staff churn and languishing vacant positions, and the city’s ethnic diversity is not mirrored in its current officer and management ranks.
In the face of years of stop-start reforms, in-custody deaths, excessive force and costly settlements, said City Council member-elect Katie Valenzuela, the trust is still not there. She said public safety should benefit everyone.
“If we’re putting money into something and it’s not working well, we should be able to step back and see where the money can be better used,” Valenzuela said.
More Californians and Americans than ever support the Black Lives Matter movement. A majority believe that recent killings of unarmed Black people by police are a sign of broader problems rather than isolated incidents.
The change agents are dealing with a legacy of mistreatment against people of color, people with mental health issues, people in poverty.
Sacramento, one of the fastest growing major cities in California, and one of the most diverse cities in America, is going through growing pains. Even during an economic fallout, home prices are soaring. Local leaders salivate over Sacramento being an “up-and-coming city,” said Sadalia King, an organizer with Black Justice Sacramento, “the business aspect of it, the art scene, the friendly touristy piece.”
But folks are being left behind. “They see all this wealth coming in and it’s not going their direction,” she said. “I think that’s part of the reckoning too.”
This summer of rage has been fueled by equal parts horror and hope. Horror that inaction in confronting police brutality — one of the most visceral manifestations of power and violence by an agent of the government — means more insidious and subtle system failures to protect people may fester.
And hope: That more neighbors are reflecting, and more elected officials are listening. Sacramento saw some of the largest marches in its history over the summer. People across fault lines of race and class and gender and generation showed they are hungry for change.
King said, the tide is shifting.
This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM.