Sacramento city attorney won’t prosecute the 42 people who violated curfew on first night
Sacramento City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood will not prosecute the 42 people who police gave curfew violations on June 1.
Alcala Wood decided not to prosecute those curfew violations because the city adopted the curfew roughly three hours before it went into effect, she said.
“While the city made every effort to promptly publish the curfew times, it is absolutely plausible that many persons were not aware of the newly adopted curfew hours, and so it is proper not to file any cases for this date,” Alcala Wood said in a statement to The Sacramento Bee.
Alcala Wood said she has not yet decided if she will prosecute the remaining 24 people who were given curfew violations June 2 through June 5.
An additional six people who were given curfew violations are also facing other charges, so the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office will handle those, she said.
The City Council enacted the first citywide curfew, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., after two nights of theft and vandalism occurred in downtown and midtown after peaceful protests against police brutality ended.
The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area sent a letter to the city Monday demanding the city not prosecute people for curfew violations. The organization has also called the curfew unconstitutional, saying it disproportionately affected Black residents and homeless people.
“If the City of Sacramento refuses to do so, we will fight against the enforcement of the unconstitutional order and offer representation to every single individual who unfairly received a citation,” the organizations wrote in a news release.
People who violated the curfew, who were not arrested and only received a summons, could have been fined $500 or jailed for up to six months. Other city attorneys in the state, such as in Los Angeles, also dropped charges against curfew-only violators.
