Video: Retiring police Chief Daniel Hahn talks crime, death threats, special moments
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Sacramento’s Police Chief
Sacramento named the city’s first woman to lead the police department on Dec. 10, 2021. As Kathy Lester steps into the new role, police Chief Daniel Hahn talks about his retirement in an interview with The Bee.
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Video: Retiring police Chief Daniel Hahn talks crime, death threats, special moments
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In a video interview, retiring Sacramento Police Department Chief Daniel Hahn reflected on his time leading the agency through four years of high-profile police killings, officer deaths, mass protest, the COVID-19 pandemic and a rise in violent crime.
He said he saw the department make significant progress on some key issues, and acknowledged that the his successor, who has not been named, will have his plenty of work still to do.
Hahn worked in law enforcement for 34 years.
“In our community, we have a lot of things going on at the same time,” Hahn said of the rise in homicides and gun seizures. “And I think it’s kind of, like you might say, a perfect storm that allows greater opportunity for violent crime to basically thrive, which it’s doing right now it is up the number of shootings are up significantly, the number of guns that we are seizing in our community are is up even more significantly.”
While noting some positive takeaways from his time at the helm of the Police Department, Hahn mentioned two sad and memorable moments: The deaths of Sacramento police Officer Tara O’Sullivan and Davis police Officer Natalie Corona.
“Both were taking taken from us very, very early in their career,” he said. “So that’s one of the things that I will always remember and always be dedicated to caring for their families who have lost so much I couldn’t imagine.”
Hahn was asked about which qualities a new police chief should bring to the job.
“I think the number one quality is is to have compassion, and to believe wholeheartedly in evolving or the ability to change, meaning, let’s not just do it the way we’ve always done it.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2021 at 4:55 AM.