Stephon Clark documentary debuts; Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn faces heated Q&A
More than 150 people gathered Thursday night at the Sofia Tsakopoulos Center for the Arts to view the premiere of “S.A.C.,” a documentary on the 2018 police shooting of Stephon Clark and its effect on the Clark family and Sacramento community.
The 32-minute documentary, produced over the past several months by The Sacramento Bee and McClatchy Studios, covers the shooting of Clark on March 18, 2018, and key moments in the year and a half that followed.
Clark, 23, was unarmed and carrying only a cellphone when he was fatally shot by two Sacramento police officers in his grandmother’s backyard in Meadowview. Police had been called to the area that night for reports of a man breaking windows, and initiated a foot pursuit.
Three days after the shooting, the Sacramento Police Department released body camera footage from the two involved officers. That footage fueled community outrage and sparked large-scale protests throughout the city, in which Clark’s brother, Stevante Clark, played an integral role.
“S.A.C.” prominently features interviews with Stevante Clark and Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, who in August 2017 became the city’s first black police chief.
The documentary drew strong reactions during Thursday’s screenings, and tensions elevated at times as Hahn and Stevante Clark joined veteran Bee reporter Sam Stanton on stage for a moderated panel discussion and Q&A session following the first of two showings.
During the Q&A, Sequette Clark took the microphone to ask Hahn if he was justified in allowing officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet to keep their jobs and return to active duty after they fatally shot her son, Stephon.
“Am I justified? Technically, legally, yeah,” Hahn answered. “There’s really no other choice that I had, because if I had fired them, they would have gotten their jobs back.”
Sequette Clark asked a second question: “If it were your son visiting his grandmother in an all-black neighborhood who had gotten killed that night, would you want the officers fired?”
Hahn’s response: “I’d probably feel very similar to you.”
Nearly every audience question during that session was directed toward Hahn, and most centered on the decision to keep the two involved officers with the department. Others asked Hahn what specific steps are being taken to improve training to prevent a similar incident from occurring.
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Hahn answered that officers are required to take 40 hours of continued education each year, which includes training on implicit bias. He also said the department is taking steps like using unmanned drones when searching for suspects, a measure he said he hopes can prevent future incidents like the March 2018 shooting of Clark.
Hahn also pointed out some changes he’s already implemented, including policy to prohibit officers from muting their body cameras – as, the documentary shows, officers did moments after the shooting – and the department’s first policies specifying guidelines for foot pursuits.
Stevante and audience members sharply criticized Hahn over the decision to keep the two involved officers employed with the department. One of the officers is currently assigned to a patrol while the other is in an investigative role, Hahn said Thursday.
During a second Q&A panel discussion, which featured Stevante Clark along with Jackie Rose of Rose Family Creative Empowerment and Genesis Church pastor Dr. Tecoy Porter, Stevante said that while he has respect for Hahn and appreciates being able to engage in a dialogue with him, he believes the chief should resign.
“I believe, for him not firing these officers, he should step down. I believe that, because he’s allowing killers on the street.”
A key moment in the “S.A.C.” shows Stevante Clark and Hahn appear together at a panel discussion hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in Washington, D.C., in September. But Stevante said Thursday night, “If I had known he wouldn’t fire those cops, I wouldn’t have gone to D.C.”
The discussion grew heated at times but remained peaceful. Crowds broke into applause frequently throughout each showing, cheering comments including those by Stevante Clark about police accountability. There were then audible boos and hisses as footage was shown from Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert’s news conference this March announcing that no criminal charges would be filed against the officers in relation to the shooting, which she said was lawful.
Stevante explained that the heart of the issue, and the most difficult gap to bridge, involves “distrust” and “little to no faith” in police in Sacramento’s underserved communities like Meadowview, Del Paso Heights and Oak Park. In Meadowview, he repeated multiple times, he believes police “protect property, not people.”
The documentary jumps in time between the immediate aftermath of the incident in March 2018, including highly emotional interviews with Clark’s mother and grandmother, and more recent developments, including the DA’s decision not to file criminal charges against the officers, and the revelation this September that Mercadal and Robinet would stay on the force with the Sacramento Police Department. The announcement came moments after federal authorities closed the civil rights case against the two officers, finding “insufficient evidence to support federal criminal civil rights charges,” the FBI and U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said in a statement.
Mercadal and Robinet in body camera footage can be heard yelling, “Gun, gun, gun” seconds before firing upon Clark. In department interviews released publicly this October, they said they fired upon Clark because they feared for their lives.
In the documentary and on stage, Stevante Clark emphasized his focus on keeping Stephon Clark’s name and legacy alive.
“We live with this every day, the family,” Stevante said. “To us, Stephon died yesterday.”
“S.A.C.” was produced by Bee journalist Alyssa Hodenfield. It will be available to the public starting Monday at sacbee.com and is available now exclusively to Bee subscribers.
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This story was originally published December 13, 2019 at 10:19 AM.
