Sacramento leaders, law enforcement look to build trust with community groups at crime summit
Sacramento police and city leaders met Friday with groups from across the community to tackle violent crime.
The daylong Violent Crime Reduction Summit at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center wouldn’t solve the issue in a single sitting — leaders on Friday said the work remains ongoing. More such meetings are planned, officials said.
Gun violence is down significantly in the city, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said before the summit, but this week’s headlines show the challenges law enforcement, leaders and the community continue to face: a shooting in South Natomas that killed two teens and left another wounded; and a man critically injured by gunfire in the city’s North City Farms neighborhood, his wounds so severe that homicide detectives are now leading the investigation; six weeks ago, a string of shootings across the city left five dead in less than 26 hours.
But leaders Friday said bringing police, City Hall and Sacramento neighborhoods impacted by violent crime under the same roof was a key step to curb violent crime.
“That’s the benefit of being a big city — big, but small enough where we know each other,” said Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester. “That, too, is public safety; the benefits and relationships we build here.”
Topics at the summit organized by the Sacramento Office of Violence Prevention and the Police Department emphasized the importance of collaborations between community organizations and law enforcement; and collaboration between community partners to reduce violence. The event was closed to reporters.
“Sacramento is a progressive city, but it’s not anti-police. They want a strong police department,” Steinberg said. “That requires an emphasis on prevention (and) working with community-based organizations that know where the hot spots are.”
Community organizers said building and maintaining trust in the neighborhoods officers serve must also be part of that equation.
For 16 years, Damond Dorrough has worked with Del Paso Heights community advocates Neighborhood Wellness, a group working to reduce gun violence on its blocks and forge a more productive relationship with the police who patrol the North Sacramento neighborhood. That relationship building starts and ends with trust, he said, but also includes faster response times and other on-the-ground results to curb violent crime.
Dorrough said it also demands a different way of policing neighborhoods like Del Paso Heights, one built far less on profiling and more on fairness, justice and community connection. He hoped Friday’s summit could be a step in that direction.
“We want things to be fair. We want to get rid of the old way of policing in our community. We live in a community with a lot of racial profiling,” Dorrough said. “We just want everything to be on the stand-up. We respect policing because we need to have police, but we want it to be fair.”
Steinberg, who will leave office in December after eight years, said the work to make Sacramento safer must also include building the community’s trust in its leaders and the people charged with serving and protecting them.
“Trust is earned and it must continue to be earned. Where trust doesn’t exist, we must work to make that better,” Steinberg before the summit convened.
“This is about building trust,” he continued. “We’re never 100% perfect, but you work toward a more perfect union. Where historic inequities and negative history exist, it requires we double and triple our efforts.”
This story was originally published November 1, 2024 at 1:07 PM.
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