Black Lives Matter plans protest to demand the removal of Sacramento’s city manager
The Sacramento Black Lives Matter chapter is planning a protest near the house of the city manager Wednesday to demand his removal.
The protest is expected to consist of a die-in, much like the protest staged in front of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s Pocket home in June after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed May 25 when an officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, prompting protests across the country.
Nearly a week afterward, at least 2,000 protesters took to the streets of Steinberg’s neighborhood, calling for an end to police brutality and seeking institutional reform.
Steinberg, however, cannot fire Sacramento police officers. Sacramento Black Lives Matter organizers noted this responsibility falls on city manager Howard Chan, who wields immense power per the city’s charter.
Black Lives Matter leadership invoked the names of Stephon Clark – who was shot and killed by officers in his grandmother’s Meadowview backyard in 2018 0150 and several other Black men who have been slain by police during Chan’s time in office as evidence of his unwillingness to hold officers accountable.
“We call for an immediate change to the city charter so that the city manager, an unelected official, is no longer in charge of termination of police officers and that responsibility be aligned with the Sacramento Mayor and Council,” organizers wrote on a social media event page. “We call for the immediate removal of the current city manager of Sacramento for taking no action in the face of police brutality.”
Sacramento’s charter has been in place for 100 years, and dictates that a city manager must be appointed by the City Council, including the mayor, which may also remove him if council members see fit. The city manager has oversight over many day-to-day operations within city limits, including the hiring and firing of police officers.
Chan was appointed by Steinberg and the rest of City Council in 2017 after serving a stint as interim city manager. Chan hired current Sacramento police chief Daniel Hahn a few months later. Hahn has also come under fire from protesters over his handling of police use-of-force incidents, and some prominent activists, including Stephon Clark’s brother, Stevante Clark, have called for his removal.
Chan did not fire the two officers who killed Stephon Clark, nor did he fire those who killed 19-year-old Darell Richards, who was shot to death by a SWAT team in 2018, nor the officer who was present when Brandon Smith died in police custody that same year.
Joseph Mann, like Clark, Richards and Smith, was Black, but was shot by Sacramento police officers in 2016, before Chan’s appointment as city manager. However, one of the officers involved in the shooting was fired in fall 2017, several months after Chan took office. Another officer retired in April 2017 following an internal investigation.
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert has never brought charges against a city police officer since she was was elected in 2014. Schubert investigated the Clark shooting for nearly a year before determining in March of 2019 she wouldn’t press charges.
The Black Lives Matter protest is scheduled for Wednesday evening, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the corner of Alpena Street and Dalhalt Way in North Natomas.
“This time we will be reminding him of the blood on his hands specifically,” protest organizers wrote on social media.
This story was originally published July 19, 2020 at 1:58 PM.