Sacramento City Council to discuss controversial ordinance to ban items at protests

The Sacramento City Council will Tuesday discuss a controversial proposal to ban mace, glass bottles, baseball bats and other items from protests.

The City Council’s Law and Legislation Committee will discuss the ordinance during its meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall. The meeting will be open to the public, with public comments accepted, City Clerk Mindy Cuppy said.

The ordinance, recommended by Deputy Chief of Police Dave Paletta, was set for a City Council vote Jan. 22. The ban would have gone into effect immediately, skipping committee consideration. After receiving concerns and questions from the public, City Manager Howard Chan pulled the item from the agenda an hour before the meeting was set to start.

City officials are preparing for District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert to announce whether she will charge the two officers who fatally shot Stephon Clark in March.

Black Lives Matter Sacramento opposed the ordinance.

“Some of these these items are necessary for our safety from the threats of our local white supremacists,” a BLM Sacramento Facebook page said.

BLM hosted a series of large protests after Clark’s death, which gained national attention. The protests cost the city about $800,000, partly because protesters used improvised weapons to damage city property, a city staff report said.

The American Sikh Public Affairs Association also opposed the ordinance because it would prohibit people from wearing kirpans to protests, its Facebook page said.

Several people showed up at the the meeting to give comments to the council, but didn’t get a chance because the meeting was adjourned when several people shouted at the council before the public comments began.

Here’s the full list of proposed banned items:

▪ Any length of lumber or wood that is more than a quarter-inch thick or more than 2 inches wide. Both ends must be blunt.

▪ Any length of metal or plastic pipe, hollow or solid, unless it is used to hold a sign. Pipes used to hold signs must be less than three-quarters inches thick, no more than one-eighth of an inch in wall thickness, and not filled with any material. Both ends must be blunt.

▪ All baseball or softball bats of any size, except those made of cloth, cardboard, soft plastic, foam or paper.

▪ Pepper spray, mace, tear gas, aerosol spray or bear repellant.

▪ Any projectile launcher, such as catapults or wrist rockets.

▪ Weapons including firearms, knives, swords, sabers, axes, hatchets, ice picks, razor blades, martial arts weapons, box cutters, pellet or BB guns, tasers or stun guns.

▪ Toy guns, unless they are florescent or transparent.

▪ Chains longer than 20 inches or more than a quarter inch in diameter.

▪ Balloons, bottles, water guns, or water cannons filled with any flammable, biohazard or other noxious matter.

▪ Glass bottles, empty or filled.

▪ Open flame torches and lanterns.

▪ Shields made of metal, wood or hard plastic.

▪ Bricks, rocks, pieces of asphalt, concrete, pellets of ball bearings.

This story was originally published February 1, 2019 at 3:26 PM with the headline "Sacramento City Council to discuss controversial ordinance to ban items at protests."