Sacramento mayor, councilman tell Trump: Do not send federal agents to our city
Sacramento elected officials are sending a message to the Trump Administration: do not send federal agents to Sacramento.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg was one of 15 mayors who signed a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf urging them not to send federal agents to more cities, as they did to Portland, Ore.
In Portland, federal agents shot a protester in the head with an impact munition, fracturing his skull, while others placed a man in an unmarked vehicle without identification, the letter said.
“These are tactics we expect from authoritarian regimes – not our democracy,” the letter said. “We urge you to take immediate action to withdraw your forces and agree to no further unilateral deployment to U.S. cities.”
The mayors of Oakland, San Jose and Los Angeles also signed the letter.
On Monday, President Donald Trump said more U.S. cities would soon see more federal law enforcement.
“I’m going to do something — that, I can tell you,” Trump said Monday. “Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these — Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.”
The Sacramento City Council plans to send a letter to the federal government telling them not to send federal agents to the city – an idea proposed by Councilman Jay Schenirer during a council meeting Tuesday.
“I’d also like the city of Sacramento to be proactive with the federal government here,” Schenirer said. “We don’t need them sending anyone here.”
Steinberg agreed with the idea to send a letter, and criticized Trump’s leadership.
“He ought to spend his time focusing on the coronavirus and the national problem his lack of leadership has made worse and stop intervening in the good and important work that’s going on in our cities,” Steinberg said during the meeting.
Protests against police brutality have been underway across the country since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Protests in Sacramento have been largely peaceful, but after the protests ended on May 30 and May 31, small groups of people broke into several stores, stole items and vandalized public and private buildings. As a response, the city instituted a curfew and called in 500 National Guard troops, which stayed through June 6.
