City Councilman wants Sacramento to lift controversial curfew immediately. Will it happen?
The city of Sacramento’s controversial 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew will remain in place tonight, despite mounting pressure from activists, a City Council member and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
City Manager Howard Chan announced his decision Friday afternoon.
“As the city manager of the capital of California, I understand the critical importance of free speech and peaceful assembly,” Chan said in a statement. “The safety of our neighborhoods and communities also is critically important.
“I have been working closely with local business districts as well as the Sacramento Police Department and the current consensus is to keep the curfew in place today with possible modifications coming as early as tomorrow. The goal is to keep all residents, businesses and visitors safe as we continue to move forward as a community.”
Mayor Darrell Steinberg supported Chan’s decision.
“I hate the very idea of a curfew, but we have kept our community safe for four straight nights,” Steinberg said in a statement. “I respect the strong desire to open up tonight, but I believe one more night errs on the side of caution. Tomorrow is only a short time away.”
Demonstrations and events against police brutality are planned Friday evening downtown as well as in Steinberg’s Greenhaven neighborhood.
Earlier Friday, City Councilman Steve Hansen publicly called on Chan to immediately end the order. If Chan refused, Hansen called for the hours to be reduced, to 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. starting Friday. The current hours of the curfew are 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., with exceptions for people going to and from work and other reasons.
“It’s time for the buildings to take down the plywood and send the message that the city is resilient,” said Hansen, who represents downtown and midtown, where massive theft and vandalism occurred over the weekend after peaceful protests against police brutality had ended.
Hansen said he wants to lift the curfew so people can go about their daily lives, including going to grocery stores and pharmacies and taking walks. He also wants to remove the barrier the curfew presents to the peaceful protests against police brutality, which are expected to continue this weekend.
“The goals of the curfew have been achieved and now it’s time to reset and allow city to begin reopening,” Hansen said. “The existing civil discourse through protest can coexist with the community being open and returning to some ability to engage in everyday life with each other.”
The city came under heat to lift its curfew from the American Civil Liberties Union, which sent a letter to the council Thursday demanding the city lift its curfew within the next 24 hours. Similar letters caused cities across the state to lift their curfews within hours.
On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom turned up the pressure some more, urging cities to “pull back” from the use of curfews and National Guard troops.
“As a former mayor, I deeply respect the work that mayors are doing at the local level. To the extent they recognize conditions have changed for the positive, I would highly encourage them to pull back on those supports,” Newsom said Friday during a news conference.
The governor said he hopes that cities will pull back “in a very expeditious manner, but in a very thoughtful manner” as local conditions in cities have changed. He hopes to be able to redeploy the National Guard back to providing support for the state’s response to the coronavirus emergency, he said.
City officials enacted the Sacramento curfew Monday in response to massive theft and destruction that occurred in downtown and midtown Saturday and Sunday after peaceful protests against police brutality had ended. Similar situations played out in cities across the country, prompting officials to quickly enact curfews to try to clear the streets so police could more easily arrest people who were stealing.
But the ACLU says it also gave police more ability to arrest and detain people and use force, exacerbating the very conditions that led to protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The resolution announced on Monday gives Chan or the full council the ability to lift the curfew. There is no council meeting scheduled until 5 p.m. Tuesday, but the council can call an emergency meeting at any time.
The National Guard is expected to be in the city for a few more days, Steinberg said Thursday.
The council, Newsom or President Trump have the ability to pull the Guard troops out of Sacramento.
The city of West Sacramento lifted its curfew Friday, it announced in a tweet Friday afternoon. The city was previously planning to reinstate the curfew for the weekend, but is no longer planning to do that.
Staff reporter Andrew Sheeler contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 1:24 PM.
