Stevante Clark arrested on suspicion of felony assault, Sacramento police say

Stevante Clark – the older brother of Stephon Clark, who was shot and killed by Sacramento police in 2018 – was arrested Monday on suspicion of felony assault and battery, according to jail records.

Clark, 27, was arrested by Sacramento police shortly after 3 p.m. Monday on a warrant and is being held in lieu of a $50,000 bond, jail records show.

Officer Karl Chan, spokesman for the Sacramento Police Department, said Clark was arrested without incident on an active warrant stemming from a domestic violence incident last month. Chan said the incident was investigated and the report was forwarded to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office.

The department said no other details would be released because the incident was related to domestic violence.

Sequita Thompson, Clark’s grandmother, said police detectives arrested Clark as he was carrying groceries into his mother’s house with his younger sister.

Thompson said she pulled her car in front of the house and put her hazard lights on. As Clark was carrying groceries into the house, she said a number of black vans with tinted windows pulled into the street and said they had a warrant for Clark’s arrest.

Thompson said she asked what the the warrant was for, but the detectives told her they didn’t know.

She then went to police headquarters on Freeport Boulevard because the detectives said they were taking Clark there. But when she arrived, the police station was closed to the public. Clark later called her from the county jail, she said.

Clark’s attorney was not immediately available for comment Monday night.

Clark was catapulted to national fame in 2018 after his brother was killed in their grandparents’ backyard in Meadowview, and Clark took to the streets in protest.

Clark didn’t have a criminal record prior to March 2018. Less than a month after his brother died, he was in handcuffs after causing damage to a north Sacramento hotel room and put on a 5150 hold, which allows law enforcement personnel and some mental health providers to place a person under a 72-hour involuntary hold if the subject is deemed a danger to himself or others. He was later transferred to the Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center, a mental health hospital.

In a 2018 interview with The Sacramento Bee, Stevante called the experience “degrading.”

After he was released from the county’s mental health treatment center, he was arrested a second time after a days-long incident in Del Paso Heights in which he barricaded his street with trash cans and threatened neighbors and a roommate.

Clark’s case was resolved in mental health court, which allowed him to avoid a criminal record upon completion of a court-mandated program.

Clark said at the time the experience was formative for him, and led to his trademark “Everybody love everybody” motto.

“I felt like people were coming at me with their own agendas,” Clark said. “It was hard for me to know what was authentic. ... A lot of people tried to help and do good things, and the ones I pushed away, I’ve apologized to and asked for forgiveness. And the ones that have stayed with me, I hope they don’t judge me on the past.”

Since then, Clark has become an advocate for police reform, helping propel AB 392 to law. The bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year is believed to be one of the toughest laws in the country regulating when police officers can use use deadly force.

He has made appearances across the state, and even spoke on a panel in Washington, D.C. with Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn at the Congressional Black Caucus’ Legislative Conference. He was featured in The Sacramento Bee’s documentary “S.A.C.” on the Stephon Clark shooting.

Clark is also a member of the city’s Measure U Community Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations for how the city should spend revenue from the Measure U sales tax increase voters approved in 2018.

This story was originally published May 18, 2020 at 4:24 PM.