Sacramento cops acted with misconduct in striking teen, city says. They’re still on the job

Two days after Sacramento police fatally shot Stephon Clark in 2018, two other Sacramento police officers allegedly struck a black teen in the face while he lay in a UC Davis Medical Center hospital bed with a gunshot wound, according to documents obtained by The Sacramento Bee.

In an Aug. 8 letter to a local attorney, an internal affairs investigation by the police department sustained the complaint made by the teen’s family against the two officers, saying “sufficient evidence supports the allegation(s) against the employee.” The letter is signed by Chief Daniel Hahn and Lt. James Harrington, commander of the department’s internal affairs division.

The complaint stemmed from an incident on March 20, 2018, when Phayjjon McClellan, then 17, was hospitalized at UC Davis Medical Center for a gunshot wound to his torso, according to a claim filed with the city of Sacramento in April 2018. The bullet had pierced his liver, the claim said, and as a result, McClellan had “tubes running into and out of his body and had colostomy bags and other bags attached to his body.”

Two officers for the Sacramento Police Department entered his hospital room in the Intensive Care Unit and asked for a cellphone that McClellan was holding. McClellan refused, and the officers allegedly “wrestled a cell phone away from (McClellan) and struck him in the face, totally without justification, endangering his life,” the claim said.

The internal affairs letters provide an unusual look into the disciplinary history of officers, whose personnel records still are closely guarded despite the passage of new legislation making certain records public in instances of sustained findings of death or great bodily injury, sexual assault and dishonesty.

Sgt. Vance Chandler, spokesman for the police department, said the officers visited the hospital room as “part of the investigation to retrieve a cell phone that was part of a shooting investigation, a shooting that involved multiple people.”

McClellan was a suspect in the shooting, he said.

Chandler was not immediately available Thursday to comment on the circumstances surrounding the complaint against the police department.

McClellan also could not be immediately reached for comment. He is currently in a fire camp custody program related to charges stemming from the shooting incident, his grandmother, Brenda Thomas Rhodes said.

A spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Division of Juvenile Justice said McClellan’s custody status could not be discussed because he was a juvenile at the time he was taken into custody.

Jamilia Land, a spokeswoman for McClellan’s family, said McClellan had two bullets in his body at the time of the incident with police officers.

The claim identifies the two Sacramento Police employees as Officers Lannom and Catricala. They are still employed at the Sacramento Police Department, Chandler said..

“(McClellan) was subject to the use of unreasonable and excessive force by officers while in a vulnerable state,” the claim against the city said.

Chandler said he could not say if the officers were disciplined, citing privacy granted by the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights.

“These are private, personnel records that cannot be disclosed,” he said in an email to The Bee.

However, under that law, which grants broad privacy protection to police personnel and their records, it is unlikely the officers were disciplined, a police internal affairs expert said. The Police Officer’s Bill of Rights stipulates that officers cannot receive punitive action “if the investigation of the allegation is not completed within one year of the public agency’s discovery by a person authorized to initiate an investigation.”

Thomas filed her complaint the day of the incident and was informed of the investigation’s conclusion in early August, roughly 17 months after the incident.

According to Thomas’ text messages provided to The Bee, she spoke to a lieutenant at the police department a day after the incident occurred. That same lieutenant called her three days later, saying he had reviewed the body camera footage, she said.

“No matter what these officers have done, if the department fails under (Police Officer Bill of Rights) to meet that one-year deadline, those officers walk,” said Ed Obayashi, a Plumas County deputy sheriff and internal affairs expert. “Those officers are off scot-free.”

The family’s attorney, Mark Merin, called the officers’ actions “entirely outrageous” and said he planned on filing a civil rights complaint in federal court in February after McClellan is released from custody.

On Tuesday, Land and Rhodes filed paperwork at the Sacramento District Attorney’s Office seeking a criminal investigation of the two officers involved, Land said.

“And so what we have here is an issue of it took over a year for this investigation to become complete and now there is, according to the letter of the law, there’s no way for these particular officers to be disciplined,” Land said. “So we are asking for criminal charges to be brought against these officers.”

Bee photographer Lezlie Sterling contributed to this report.