Sacramento citizen oversight groups set to discuss police reform and sales tax funding
Two Sacramento citizen oversight panels will conduct a joint meeting Monday evening to discuss how they can work together on policing best practices and funding to improve the city’s underserved communities.
The joint meeting of the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission and the Measure U Community Advisory Committee is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Monday and will be livestreamed via Zoom. Members of the public are encouraged to submit a comment through the City of Sacramento’s website. Archived videos of the meetings are available later on the site.
The police commission is consists of citizen volunteers tasked with providing oversight on Police Department policies and submitting recommendations to the city’s elected leaders. In June, the Sacramento City Council adopted a new police use-of-force policy with language recommended by the police commission.
The Measure U committee was created in 2018 to oversee city sales tax revenue that’s supposed to largely go toward inclusive economic development initiatives to uplift disadvantaged communities.
Measure U funding became the focal point of heated debate last summer as the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and other reported acts of brutality by law enforcement officers led to a call to “defund the police.” At the time, a group of high profile leaders in Sacramento’s Black community called for a removal of $20 million in Measure U sales tax money from the police budget.
Along with discussing how the two oversight panels can work together, they will discuss the key findings of a public study on community views of police reforms in Sacramento. Listed as a consent item on the meeting’s agenda is an analysis of an update to the Police Department budget for the fiscal year 2021-22.
