Sacramento’s curfew is over. City Council votes to lift 8 p.m. order, release National Guard
When the clock strikes 8, residents on Saturday again will be allowed to go about their daily lives, including continue protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody or running to grab a bite to eat.
The Sacramento City Council voted during an emergency meeting Saturday to lift the nightly curfew that has been imposed on residents for five days, a response to last weekend’s destruction in the wake of the nonviolent protests that have dominated the city’s core for nine straight nights.
While attending a protest Saturday morning that had congregated around Cesar E. Chavez Plaza, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg told protesters that the curfew would be lifted.
“I know words help but only action heals,” he told the crowd in a speech which ended with him shouting “Black Lives Matter.”
City Councilman Steve Hansen, in a post on Twitter, said just after 1:30 p.m. that the council voted 8 to 1 to ending the curfew. Councilman Larry Carr — who represents Meadowview, Parkway and Valley Hi/North Laguna — was the lone “no” vote.
Carr told The Sacramento Bee that although he appreciates the peaceful protesters who have brought intensity to their advocacy, he believes that bad actors taking advantage of the situation still pose a threat to the safety of businesses in the community.
“There are opportunists in our area who are willing to take advantage of our protests,” Carr said.
He would have preferred to see a curfew enacted from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. through the weekend — which he said may bring out more agitators as opposed to protests during the week.
Businesses in his district have voiced concerns over more looting, prompting him to weigh the rights of those looking to peaceably assemble and express themselves and the rights of local establishments to operate freely without being targeted.
“We appreciate the people who are out peacefully protesting,” Carr said, but added that “it’s a balancing act.”
Some businesses, he said, fear that once restrictions start to ease up, vandalism and looting may resume.
Steinberg, however, said in a statement released earlier in the morning that the tone of recent protests was justification for lifting the curfew: “Last night’s peaceful and powerful demonstrations give me confidence that these steps, which we took reluctantly, are no longer necessary.”
The deployment of National Guard troops, who have been stationed in Sacramento for nearly a week, will expire at at 11:59 p.m. Saturday.
“We do not want to keep a curfew in place or the guard on our streets a minute longer than necessary,” Steinberg said in a statement. “The peaceful and powerful demonstrations of the past five days have given me confidence that these measures, which we imposed reluctantly, are no longer needed.”
The City Council and City Manager Howard Chan still have the ability to reinstate curfew and call back the National Guard at any time.
On Friday, a large and peaceful group of over 2,000 staged a series of ‘die-ins,’ demonstrations wherein protesters laid on the ground for 8 minutes and 46 seconds at a time — the same length of time a Minneapolis police officer pinned George Floyd before his death — mere blocks from Steinberg’s house near Greenhaven Drive and Florin Road.
Protests have taken place in the downtown area for more than a week and largely taken place without incident. The curfew, however, was initially enacted in response to widespread looting and vandalism in the city’s urban core May 29 and 30. Many storefronts had their windows smashed, while others were sacked by burglars.
It marked a historic restriction upon Sacramento residents, who had never before been put under a true curfew. Throughout the city, being out between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. is currently a punishable offense, and several arrests have been made by police for breaking curfew.
Since the curfew was enacted and National Guard troops were called in, protests in Sacramento have remained peaceful, but the order was not universally popular, even within City Hall.
On Friday, as Steinberg and Chan announced their intention to continue the curfew that night, City Councilman Steve Hansen demanded that the curfew be immediately lifted, or, barring that, significantly scaled down.
“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, the primary sites of looting last weekend. “The goals of the curfew have been achieved and now it’s time to reset and allow city to begin reopening. 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.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom stopped short of asking local mayors to end the use of curfews as a response to the protests, which have spread across the state and the nation, but voiced some hesitation with regard to their implementation.
“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 American Civil Liberties Union also took Sacramento to task, sending a letter to City Council, arguing that the curfew was unconstitutional.
“As other places are lifting their orders, Sacramento seems to be digging their feet in the ground,” said Abre’ Conner, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California.
Most cities in California had by Friday already rescinded their curfews, including San Francisco and Los Angeles.
West Sacramento suspended its curfew on Wednesday and officially lifted it on Friday afternoon, according to Mayor Christopher Cabaldon.
This story was originally published June 6, 2020 at 10:25 AM.
