Sacramento police chief confronts ‘alarming’ gun violence in first months on the job
Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester devoted her first three months on the job to developing plans to turn back a rise in gun violence, strengthen the public’s trust in her department and work with community groups to attack the root cause of crime.
Sacramento’s new chief, the first woman selected to lead Sacramento’s police force, took over after years marked by turbulence. Police shootings, protests and the pandemic altered how we view policing and life in Sacramento and across the nation.
She would assume her new role and continue in efforts to reform and improve.
But she also took office as an alarming nationwide trend hit home in Sacramento, again reshaping the issues consuming law enforcement. As a new chief, she was faced with new turbulence.
The number of homicides in the city last year – 57 –matched the highest total since 2006. The killings unfolded as police officers pulled an increasing number of illegally-possessed guns off the street.
In the first few months of her job, Lester wanted to get even more of those weapons out of the hands of suspected criminals.
“I am really concerned just locally here because we saw some really significant increases, as well,” Lester told The Sacramento Bee in an interview in late March. “And those increases lead directly to actual people, people getting hurt, people being shot and unfortunately, in some circumstances, being killed.”
And then gunfire erupted in the early hours of April 3 in downtown Sacramento.
Lester and her officers were confronted with one of the largest mass shootings in city history; a shootout with many caught in the crossfire. The indiscriminate spray of gunfire, fueled by violent street gang bravado, killed six people and injured 12 others on K Street.
Lester said the scale of violence displayed that night was “unprecedented” in her 27 years with the Police Department. At a news conference hours after the downtown shooting, Lester expressed her sorrow for the families of those killed and the others wounded in the brazen shooting.
“We are shocked and heartbroken by this tragedy,” Lester told reporters. “But we are also resolved as an agency to find those responsible and to secure justice for the victims and their families.”
Climbing the ranks in Sacramento Police Department
Her path to that terrible day began in 1994, when Lester joined the Police Department as a dispatcher. She worked as a community service officer in 1995 and by 1996 took her oath as a sworn police officer. Since then, she’s worked in traffic enforcement, recruitment, internal affairs, criminal intelligence and in executive command roles.
For a time, she moved up the ranks while taking care of her three children as a single mother.
“I realized pretty quickly that this is a profession that creates a career, but more importantly, really, a life with purpose,” she said in March at the ceremony where she took her oath as police chief.
She succeeds retiring Police Chief Daniel Hahn, a Sacramento native who led the department through those turbulent years of protests.
City Manager Howard Chan promoted Lester to lead the department of 1,100 employees — about 700 of whom are sworn officers — to continue in Hahn’s direction of diversifying the force, getting officers to “buy-in” to reforms and expanding various accountability and transparency initiatives.
Lester has put a lot of thought into the department’s tactics.
“I’ve been entrusted with this very important thing for our city, which is to provide public safety the right way,” Lester said. “That’s really where the pressure comes from, it’s to make sure that our organization is serving the people the right way and that I, personally, am making the right decisions to do that.”
When she joined the ranks, she noticed the Police Department would respond to a surge in crime by placing a large number of officers in a neighborhood.
That approach was effective to a certain extent, she said, resulting in an arrest or weapon seizures.
But Lester said it also “negatively impacted” those neighborhoods in the long term, because there were a lot of people who had nothing to do with gun violence caught in that enforcement.
Now, as the department’s leader, she can respond to violent crime with her own strategy.
More illegal gun seizures and more homicides
Even before the downtown shooting, Lester was concerned about increasing gun violence in Sacramento. She wanted to lean on partnerships with community groups to push back against this “alarming” trend, she said.
Officers in 2020 seized about 1,200 illegally-possessed guns found in Sacramento. Last year, police pulled 1,600 guns off the streets. In both those years, the city’s number of homicides also increased.
“What that tells me when we’re seizing that many guns, there’s a lot more out there for sure that we don’t know about,” Lester told The Bee.
In the weeks following the downtown shooting, the Police Department on social media has announced the seizures of illegal guns, saying officers “will continue to address gang crimes and violent crimes in a comprehensive manner.”
Mervin Brookins, founder of Sacramento anti-violence community group Brother 2 Brother, said long-term investment in neighborhoods is needed to stop gang violence. But he also said cops pulling illegal guns off the street is a “hell of a start.”
“The Police Department should be applauded on just that effort alone,” said Brookins, who works directly with former gang members and at-risk youths. ”Quite frankly, there’s a lot more guns available. Had police not pulled those guns off the street, there would’ve been more crimes.”
Lester agrees, saying gun seizures, enforcement and investigations are just part of the solution. She believes community-based organizations in a lot of cases can be much more effective in making their neighborhoods safer.
“What I do know is that for people that are involved in violence or gun violence, there’s generally other issues involved, workforce issues like joblessness, addiction, maybe someone’s been released from the prison system or the custodial system and hasn’t really been given resources,” Lester said. ”If we can intervene or prevent someone from being involved in violent crime in the first place, that to me is a priority.”
What residents want from new police chief
Brookins has known Lester for several years as she worked as Hahn’s second-in-command. He said she’s done well in listening to community groups in response to the downtown shooting.
He said he expects her to lead the department much like Hahn did, because “the core of their philosophies are very similar.”
Sonia Lewis, a community activist with Liberation For Black Sacramento, said she’s hopeful Lester brings about lasting change to her department. But Lewis said she fears Lester is the head of the same structure that’s prevented a shift in the “dynamic of power” back to the community.
Lewis feels the new police chief should take more of a lead on where funding should go when it comes to violence prevention. She said she worries a continued disconnect between city officials and the community will lead to “bloody” gang warfare this summer.
The community activist said a thorough audit of policies and procedures that target marginalized communities is needed, such as non-felony arrests that place poor people in jail because they can’t afford bail. Lewis also said Lester needs to prioritize hiring officers who live and represent the neighborhoods they police.
Lewis also said law enforcement continues to take a “lion’s share” of city funding, while some community groups are neglected.
The Police Department’s 2021-2022 $166 million budget was a $9.4 million increase for more officers, replacement vehicles and salary raises as activists throughout the country have called for “defunding the police” in response to police shootings and excessive use of force.
City officials say the department’s budget includes funding for five new officers in divisions “important to ensuring transparency, such as public records and professional standards.”
Sacramento residents distrustful of police
Sacramento police needed the community’s help as they set out to apprehend suspects in the K Street mass shooting.
That wasn’t a given.
Members of the public, particularly a majority of those already exposed to gun violence, demonstrated distrust of the Police Department in a 2019 survey.
“Only a startling 5% of Blacks who were exposed to gun violence state they have complete or quite a bit of trust in the Sacramento police,” according to a report on the survey.
The survey also found that 20% of Asians, 28% of Latinos, and 38% of whites exposed to gun violence have complete or quite a bit of trust in the Police Department. Citywide, 45% of Sacramento residents surveyed said people in their neighborhood avoid calling police “because they were afraid of being harmed by officers,” according to the report.
The public, however, did respond to the department’s plea for help after the mass shooting, sending in more than 200 videos and photos through an online community evidence portal.
Some of the leads included videos posted to social media by suspected gunmen in the hours before the violence.
“This level of cooperation speaks to the character of those who came forward, it validates our work to earn the trust and the cooperation of our community, as well,” Lester said during a May 3 news conference announcing murder charges in connection with the shooting.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said the new police chief has handled one of the worst acts of violence in the city’s history with “skill, calm and reassurance,” and that inspires his confidence in her.
“I suppose in a very tragic way, that one’s formative experience as a leader is had during a time of great crisis,” Steinberg said. “She has, I think, been very aware that her words have great import, especially when it comes to maintaining the strength of an ongoing investigation. I think she has stepped up in every way.”
The mayor said he was with Lester throughout that Sunday as investigators worked to gather more information. He said Lester was focused as she thought about what was to come in the next hours and days of the investigation, again demonstrating her ability to lead the department.
In the weeks since the shooting, the Police Department has arrested three people. Two of them, brothers Smiley Martin and Dandrae Martin, have been identified as being among at least five suspects who opened fire on K Street that night. Another suspected K Street shooter, Mtula Payton, has not been found by police.
The Martins and Payton have been charged with murder. Prosecutors allege the defendants participated in a gun battle that resulted in the deaths of three women described by authorities as bystanders caught in the crossfire. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the deaths of three other men and the 12 people wounded.
Steinberg said he’s eager, like everyone else, to learn of criminal charges that directly implicate those responsible for killing six people and wounding 12 others.
“I’m anxious, but I’m not the least bit disheartened,” Steinberg said about the status of the shooting investigation. “In fact, I’m gratified that the police are not acting in ways that are overly concerned about the impression that’s being made; they’re focused on getting it right.”
