Update: Sacramento to get curfew tonight. ‘We can’t continue to tolerate’ destruction
The city of Sacramento will have a curfew Monday night, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced Monday morning.
The curfew will start at 8 p.m. Monday and last until 5 a.m. Tuesday.
By afternoon, as the City Council discussed the details of the plan during a closed-session meeting, about 500 National Guard troops arrived in the city.
Steinberg and City Council members will hold a virtual news conference at 5:30 p.m. to discuss the Guard’s presence and details of the curfew, which has yet to be issued, including the time it begins.
“We are going to try to shut it down tonight even before it gets dark,” Steinberg said, referring to the destruction and theft. He stood outside a ravaged Tony’s Delicatessen & Catering downtown after helping with cleanup.
Steinberg said he did not know how effective the curfew would be, because results have been mixed in other cities, but wanted to provide another tool to police.
The plan is for the curfew to have exceptions for media, essential workers and people going to and from work, according to a draft of the resolution posted to the city website. People who violate the curfew, after oral or written notice is given, could be arrested and cited for $500 and imprisonment for up to six months, according to the city code. The curfew remains in effect until it is terminated by the city.
It is the first time in living memory that the council has enacted a curfew as a result of an emergency situation, according to city spokesman Tim Swanson. Historians say they believe Sacramento has never before imposed a general curfew.
Sacramento will join the growing list of California cities that have enacted curfews. The Bay Area cities of San Francisco, San Jose, Walnut Creek, Danville, Pleasant Hill, and Santa Clara all were under curfews Sunday night, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. At 8 p.m. Sunday in San Francisco, the hour the curfew started, police ordered a crowd to disperse or be arrested, the paper reported.
National guard arrives
As the City Council began its 3:30 p.m. session, the city released a statement that about 500 National Guard troops had arrived. Many of them were reportedly staging at Cal Expo, an area that law enforcement has used as a sitational hub before.
The city and police department made the request for additional assistance Sunday, the news release said.
The National Guard troops will allow the police to respond to any reports of violence and destruction of property, the release said. The National Guard have been helping on coronavirus response in Sacramento for several weeks.
Troops also have been deployed in Los Angeles and Long Beach and are currently on standby in San Francisco.
The ACLU of Northern California is asking cities not to enact curfews, which could lead to police harassment.
“This is the wrong way to handle disruptions to what have been otherwise peaceful protests, and they are far broader than necessary to address any problems that have arisen or may arise,” the ACLU said in a news release. “Moreover, by making presence on public streets anywhere in these cities unlawful, these measures give police too much discretion over whom to arrest and will lead to selective and biased enforcement and risk harassment of people who are unhoused. In short, these measures will only repeat the very problems that our communities are protesting.”
Response to destruction
The announcement follows two nights of theft and vandalism in downtown and midtown, which came after peaceful protests against police brutality.
About 130 businesses had their doors and windows broken over the course of both nights, said Downtown Sacramento Partnership Executive Director Michael Ault. He estimates $10 million in damage has been done, and that about 300 buildings had graffiti on them as of Monday morning.
That destruction occurred despite the presence of 10 law enforcement agencies in the city Sunday night helping Sacramento police, Ashby said.
Ault supports the curfew, he said Monday.
“We need to do something,” Ault said. “We can’t continue to tolerate this level of destruction to our downtown.”
City Councilman Jeff Harris said he believes the vandals are an organized group that are largely not connected to the protesters, although there may be some overlap.
“We have intel to know an organized criminal element is coming into town to create havoc,” Harris said. “We don’t think it’s associated with the protest, but perhaps there’s some overlap. Protesters are frustrated with them. We have a real situation here.”
On Saturday night, a group of young appeared to splinter off from the protesters and started smashing windows. They stole from the Macy’s, Sharif Jewelers, Navin’s men’s clothing store, Kicz sneaker store, BevMo and several other businesses with no police in sight. They were eventually stopped by police near 21st and J streets and dispersed after 2 a.m.
Council passed on curfew Sunday
The City Council met Sunday, bracing for another night of destruction and theft, but decided against issuing a curfew or calling in the National Guard. Instead, the council “elevated” its mutual aid agreements with other law enforcement agencies, Steinberg said.
The council has been adding law enforcement agencies to its mutual aid agreement over the last few days and as of Saturday evening, it was up to 10, Ashby said.
“We believed and were advised by public safety professionals that calling a curfew at the beginning might actually have made the situation worse,” Steinberg said Monday. “I do not second-guess my police department. I think they’ve done a great job. Now we take that next step. We call for a curfew and if nothing else, I think it will reduce the overall numbers of people on the streets and make the overall situation easier to manage.”
On Sunday evening, hundreds gathered in Cesar E. Chavez Plaza listening to speakers, chanting and engaging in a peaceful demonstration. At one point, demonstrators knelt down and officers joined them. Then, just like the night before, another group started smashing windows and stealing.
“Last night we heard all kinds of reports that there are people on bikes with phones organizing various movements around town,” Steinberg said.
‘Shut it down ... before it gets dark’
At about 8:30 p.m., a Sacramento Bee reporter observed several vehicles park downtown, put on face coverings exposing only their eyes, and run toward J Street. That was the case through the evening and even after midnight, when a group got out of an SUV near on 14th Street, huddled and then went running down I Street.
Police Chief Daniel Hahn said the vandals were coordinated and organized, and that some people were dropping off boxes of rocks at the protesters and trying to pull officers into the crowd to assault them.
“I stand with these community leaders in our city to condemn what they did to our businesses, condemn what they did to each other, to condemn what they did to the police officers and the damage they did to the legitimate protesters that want to see things change on a topic that’s troubled our country since its inception,” Hahn said Monday during a news conference outside City Hall with the city’s African American leaders.
Steinberg agreed.
“These were peaceful protests and it’s exactly the kind of thing you want to see in your community because people have a right to be outraged about what happened in Minneapolis,” Steinberg said. “It’s only when it gets dark and people ... are coming in and are doing this where it changes. Well we are going to try to shut it down tonight even before it gets dark.”
Demonstrators on Sunday tried to dissuade people from breaking windows and stealing from stores following a third day of peaceful protests against the death of George Floyd. Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, sparking protests across the country.
Stevante Clark, brother of Stephon Clark, the unarmed black man who was killed by Sacramento police in 2018, said the people who were stealing Saturday night were not the group of people who were demonstrating against the death of George Floyd earlier that day.
Citywide order is a first
The citywide curfew would appear to be the first in Sacramento’s modern history. Nick Piontek, an archivist at the Sacramento History Museum, said he couldn’t find any record of a curfew that covered the entire city. A check of The Sacramento Bee’s historical archives turned up empty as well.
There have been selective curfews, however.
In February 1942 a 9 p.m. curfew took effect across Northern California for Americans of Japanese, German and Italian descent. A month later, the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans got underway.
More recently, the city of Sacramento in 2011 began enforcing an 11 p.m. curfew in an effort to remove Occupy Sacramento protesters from Cesar E. Chavez Plaza. The decision was challenged in court by civil liberties lawyers, but in July 2012 a federal judge sided with the city.
This story was originally published June 1, 2020 at 8:15 AM.
