Sacramento will hire inspector general, moves to redirect some 911 calls from police
The Sacramento City Council approved a police reform package Wednesday night despite the pleas of more than two dozen community members who said the plan does not go far enough and demanded the council remove funding from the police department’s $157 million budget.
The plan approved by the council includes an inspector general for police oversight and a step toward shifting the response for some noncriminal 911 calls away from the police department and on to nonpolice professionals.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg last month proposed both changes following national protests against police brutality sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“It’s never too early to make change but it’s also never too late,” Steinberg said. “What we are presenting here tonight is the beginning of systemic reform.”
The inspector general, which will be in the existing Office of Public Safety Accountability, will have “full independence and authority to investigate officer-involved shootings and use-of-force incidents that result in serious bodily injury or death,” the resolution stated.
Steinberg said he wants that person, who will be hired with public input, to have more than just the authority, but the responsibility to investigate the officers when incidents involve serious injury, death or sexual assault. A new state law allows cities to disclose personnel information on officers when incidents fall into those three categories, which “opened the door” for the new position, Steinberg said.
The position will differ from the inspector general that oversees the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, which is not allowed to investigate personnel-related matters.
The authority to decide whether to terminate officers will remain with the city manager, but only after the inspector general makes public recommendations, forcing those conversations out into the open for the first time, Steinberg said.
Last year, city officials announced the two officers who fatally shot unarmed Stephon Clark in 2018 in his grandmother’s backyard would not be fired, sparking community protests. There were no findings released publicly about what led to that decision.
No details on when police budget will be cut
The 911 change will occur within two years, Steinberg said.
The city will create a new division, department or unit to handle noncriminal calls, Steinberg said. Those calls include some involving people who are homeless, or having a mental health crisis, but is not exclusive to those categories.
The city next plans to research both police and fire department 911 calls to determine which types of calls would go to the new unit and how dispatchers will adjust their response. The council plans to start getting that data and have the next discussion within 45 days, the council report said.
In 2019, about 13 percent of the more than 400,000 calls the department responded to were considered “low risk” — things like welfare checks, missing persons, hazards and abandoned vehicles, Deputy Police Chief Kathy Lester said.
“To see a 5150, an adult or a kid, in the back of a police car when they haven’t committed any crime because that’s the only response we know ... is just plain wrong,” Steinberg said, referring to state code for the temporary, involuntary psychiatric commitment of people who present a danger to themselves or others due to signs of mental illness. “We have an opportunity to fix it.”
To get the new city entity started, the council directed the city manager to find $5 million in the city general fund, which may or may not come from the police department budget.
Steinberg has previously said the 911 change would ultimately result in at least $10 million being diverted from the police department. He did not share any additional details Wednesday about how much money would be shifted away from the department and when.
That question is of high interest to activists and community members asking for the council to “defund” police as part of a national movement, and also of concern to the police union.
“Taking the responsibility away from police officers and giving it to social workers will not solve anything,” Sacramento Police Officers Association President Timothy Davis said in a June news release. “We need a partnership between law enforcement and social workers, as well as triage centers and long-term services to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.”
Residents think changes don’t go far enough
Councilman Jeff Harris said the proposal should be paired with a new facility the city and county open as a place for those in mental health crisis to be brought other than the emergency room, the current default.
“This is a big deal,” Harris said of the 911 change. “This is really fundamentally altering the way we do service for people in our community.”
But about 30 community members who called in said that change and the others discussed do not go far enough to meet the moment.
“Council has marginalized the voices of the community and will proceed with this hamfisted, underfunded and poorly considered set of 1998 reforms,” tweeted Flojaune Cofer, chairwoman of the city’s Measure U Citizens Advisory Committee and an activist.
Cofer and other high-profile Black community leaders have been urging the council to remove $45.7 in original and new Measure U sales tax revenue going to police in the budget that began July 1. That would be about 29 percent of the department’s all-time-high $157 million budget for the fiscal year.
Many callers urged the council to listen to Cofer and the committee. They mentioned the proposals don’t include removing police funding, which the Los Angeles City Council voted to do earlier in the day.
“I’m disappointed in your lip service to the issue while being beholden to the police department still,” one caller said. “We cannot reform our way out of this. We must defund and restructure.”
That’s what the city of Minneapolis did following Floyd’s killing, several callers pointed out.
In addition to the calls, the council received 147 written comments in advance of the meeting. Many demanded the council remove police funding, and accused the council to breaking the promise of Measure U.
After the meeting, Councilwoman-elect Katie Valenzuela, who will represent midtown, downtown and Land Park starting in December, tweeted: “Sacramento - you’re right to be frustrated. You deserve to be heard, to have greater influence. Our City is trying to solve this without your input. They’re missing the opportunity to dialogue, learn and do SO much better. But we can’t afford to stop. Keep pushing.”
Steinberg said the reforms passed Wednesday were just the beginning and many more are to come.
Councilman Allen Warren said he wants the city to start automatically placing officers on unpaid leave after they use force on “unarmed and nonthreatening” individuals. Councilwoman Angelique Ashby said she wants the city to push the California Highway Patrol officers and Sacramento County Sheriff’s Deputies to start wearing body cameras like Sacramento police officers do.
Use-of-Force policy changes
In other business, Mario Guerrero, the chair of the Police Citizens Review Commission, presented recommendations to the council, including that “last resort” language be added to the use-of-force policy, going beyond what the new state law requires. He also recommended officers be required to be tested for drugs and alcohol following use-of-force incidents, among other recommendations.
“We believe the commission has done a lot of work and has not been taken seriously,” Guerrero said.
Steinberg said the council would meet again soon to consider approving those recommendations and get police response, instead of letting them disappear “into the ether,” which is what happened to the ideas the commission presented last year
“The council has not worked as well or closely with your commission as we should,” Steinberg said. “There are a lot of reasons for that but it doesn’t matter. This is a new day.”
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 7:06 AM.
