Did secret Sacramento City Council discussion of Sac PD’s protest response break state law?
The Sacramento City Council gathered last week behind closed doors to discuss the police department’s response to downtown demonstrations attended by white supremacist groups, a move that watchdogs said potentially violated a state law requiring most meetings about city business to be public.
An agenda said the Tuesday meeting was closed to the public because the council was conducting a performance review for City Manager Howard Chan. But council members viewed “a lot” of video footage of police responding to the demonstrations, Councilman Jeff Harris said in a public session afterward.
Harris referenced the closed-meeting discussion after a member of the public who had called into the meeting accused Sacramento police of protecting white supremacists.
“We did have a closed session in which we viewed a lot of video regarding recent protests and I think that those assertions can be absolutely refuted,” Harris told the caller.
The state’s open-meetings law, known as the Brown Act, allows elected local government officials to meet privately, but puts restrictions on the topics they may discuss. Employee evaluations, typically conducted on an annual basis, are allowed in closed sessions.
Last week’s meeting was the fifth time the council has shut out the public to review Chan’s performance since August. The agenda of the most recent meeting was written by City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood and posted to the city website on Jan. 4.
White supremacist groups, including the Proud Boys, have been gathering in downtown Sacramento most Saturdays since President Trump’s election loss.
The groups have clashed at times with counter-protesters. Activists allege that police have treated the Trump supporters more favorably than the counter-protesters in some instances, letting them get away with apparent assaults on counter-protesters and homeless people without being arrested.
Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela cited some of those concerns on Dec. 15 when she asked that a public discussion be scheduled Jan. 5 about how police had handled white supremacist-organized events in the past, and the plan for handling them in the future.
“I’ve watched several videos from last weekend, several videos from the last several weekends that really bother me showing behaviors of the Sacramento Police Department toward counter-protesters, toward the press that would be pretty unacceptable if those videos turn out to be accurate,” said Valenzuela, who represents the central city.
The city scheduled at least part of that discussion but kept it private.
“I would just like to say, in defense of the PD, that I certainly feel that they have mounted a pretty substantial and very thoughtful response to the demonstrations and have been very even-handed,” Harris said in the open session last week after emerging from the closed meeting.
City spokesman Tim Swanson said the closed session was indeed an evaluation of the city manager. “Several performance topics relating to the city manager were discussed,” Swanson said in an email. “One of them was the council wanted him to go over his management of and direction to police regarding responding to protests.”
At least one court has ruled that employee evaluations can be pegged to specific events and not just their overall performance during the year, said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. If the conversation was limited strictly to the city manager’s performance related to the protests, the closed session was allowed, Snyder said.
But if it veered into a more generalized discussion of police response to the demonstrations, it was not. Additionally, if the council discussed how police will handle demonstrations in the future, it should not have taken place in private, Snyder said.
“The City Council cannot veil discussions about their potential actions in secrecy unless those discussions are truly and only about evaluating the city manager’s performance,” Snyder said in an email.
Misuse of the Brown Act?
Snyder said the meeting details raise questions about whether city officials are abusing the exemption that allows them to shut the door on the public in order to discuss the city manager’s performance.
“The number of closed meetings on this topic raises some suspicion that the City Council did not strictly limit its discussions to an evaluation of the city manager’s performance, as is required under California law,” Snyder said, referring to the five times since August the council has discussed Chan’s performance in private.
The council conducts an annual performance review of Chan, Swanson said. Swanson did not know if last week’s closed session included the annual review as well as the discussion about the demonstrations. The last time Chan had a pay raise was February 2019. His base salary is $308,000.
The closed conversation of the topic occurred the night before a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
The Capitol riot elevated the Sacramento demonstrations to an even greater matter of public interest and concern, said Sonia Lewis, a community activist. Lewis, who is Black, said she has not been attending the Saturday demonstrations as a counter-protester out of fear for her safety. But she’s seen videos on social media and she has many concerns about the police response.
“I can’t physically be present, but I for damn sure can be present when we have conversations with our elected officials who I know are having closed-door conversations,” Lewis said. “They all need to be checking themselves in regards to violating the Brown Act.”
Lewis has attended and organized peaceful protests in the city against police brutality in recent years, where she says officers have mistreated Black Lives Matter protesters. At least four people are suing the city after they were seriously injured by police projectiles during the protests against police brutality over the summer, following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Lewis pointed out.
Because of instances like this, the city should never shut the public out of discussions about police response to any type of protest or demonstration, Lewis said.
Will discussion become public?
Valenzuela said she still wants a public discussion like the one she originally requested.
“I asked for this because I think accountability and transparency are important,” Valenzuela said last week. “I’ve seen trends that are frustrating and I’m hearing consistent feedback from my district expressing concerns about these protests. These white supremacy groups have been emboldened by actions this week and now more than ever it’s critical to have a clear strategy and policy for how we manage violence from white supremacist groups moving forward.”
Mayor Darrell Steinberg also said he wants to have a public discussion.
“I am very concerned about what we have seen from some of the same groups who caused the riot this week in our nation’s Capitol,” Steinberg said in a statement. “The only way to address these issues is with full transparency. The city will fully investigate any complaint about use of force during these protests. We will soon schedule a public City Council meeting to look at the video of any questioned incidents, from all angles and perspectives. People will have their concerns, accusations, and questions answered fully.”
The mayor’s office is aiming to schedule that public review for the council’s Jan. 19 meeting, said Mary Lynne Vellinga, Steinberg’s spokeswoman.
While a public conversation is good, the public should have been included in the discussions on the topic from the very beginning, Lewis said.
“They’ve done everything to manipulate and try to exclude the public from these conversations,” Lewis said.
This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
