Defund or deploy? My talk with the mayor about that, police brutality and brutal truths
Here are five takeaways from my Facebook Live interview with Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg on Wednesday. Steinberg chats with me at 6 p.m. every Wednesday.
This week, we talked about police use of force, defunding the police and COVID-19.
1. Will the city address police brutality?
We should always remember that Steinberg is an expert tap dancer when posed with questions about how he and his Sacramento City Council colleagues fell short. I reminded Steinberg that he and his council colleagues had been blowing off citizen recommendations about police brutality for more than a year.
The Sacramento Community Police Review Commission has, since the fall of 2018, been recommending that the council tighten controls on city cops using deadly force in the line of duty. And the commission, with no real power, hasn’t even been able to get onto Steinberg’s calendar.
At their last meeting on March 9, just before the region shut down to combat COVID-19, commission members went around and around in futility and got no answer on a very basic question: How could they get on Steinberg’s calendar to talk to him about police brutality.
These recommendations came after international attention focused on Sacramento after city cops killed an unarmed Stephon Clark. And even though the publicity from the Clark case made Sacramento ground zero for police brutality in 2018, the citizens commission that was supposed to make recommendations to the City Council for police consideration got stiffed.
There is no other way to put it. Well, Steinberg did:
“The commission had enhanced powers that really weren’t spelled out as well as they should have or could have,” Steinberg said. “In part, you can put some of the responsibility on them and us. We ( the City Council) didn’t work as closely with them as we could have or should have.”
You think?
So for citizens of Sacramento, the primary question here is: Why should anyone believe the city actually will take on police brutality this time?
2. Here come another host of ideas
Steinberg has flipped into Full Metal Steinberg mode. What does that mean? It means he will now present a host of ideas to address the failures of the last host of ideas proffered after the last time people took to the streets to protest police brutality, the Clark killing in 2018. Clark then, George Floyd now.
“We are going to enhance the form, the power and the responsibility of the whole operation. We are working on a specific proposal on how we can create an independent review in our city and when that is done, the whole commission will be seen in a different light,” he said.
“We’re going to have something in the end that represents... some form of independent review – at least for the most serious kinds of allegations.”
What does this mean? Will the city create a true oversight commission that is not connected to other law enforcement groups with conflicts of interest with city police? Steinberg wouldn’t say right now but advocates need to remember how the city made some changes after the Clark killing. Creating an independent review was not one of them.
3. Where the rubber bullets meet the confrontations
The mayor is not ready to abolish the use of rubber bullets and tear gas just yet.
Steinberg says that cops “need to be called out” when using rubber bullets, pepper spray and bean bags on peaceful protesters.
“Whoever engages in that needs to be held accountable,” he said. But the mayor does believe that rubber bullets can be used when there is “provocation” toward officers or when an assailant wields a weapon at officers.
“I saw a video where somebody in a mask approached a line of officers with a knife,” he said. “In that particular instance, I am glad there is some ability to use some of those non-lethal forms, because without that, the individual probably would have been shot.”
That actually is a good point that needs to be addressed. When large masses of people take to the streets, you get a virtual community of people driven by a wide spectrum of motivations. What do you do when someone wields a weapon at cops? Isn’t it better that the assailant is neutralized by rubber bullets or pepper spray as opposed to being shot?
Steinberg vowed that all video of police confrontations would be made public so all of us can determine if use of force by police was justified.
4. Defund the police? Just say...sort of
Steinberg has a liberal soul but a pragmatic brain. He does not believe in the latest favorite phrase – “defunding” police.
“I’m not offended by the term (defunding) because I think it provokes necessary debate,” Steinberg said. “I don’t agree with it if it means we should end funding for the police. Or even if it takes huge chunks from the police budget.”
Steinberg has an idea about “defunding” that is more “transformational” he said. He said he is currently analyzing data on the kinds of calls police respond to and he expects it will show that mental health calls and homeless calls dominate their work volume.
If that is the case, Steinberg wants to look at deploying people other than cops when possible.
“Police officers are not mental health experts. They are not homeless experts,” he said. “I would be in favor of shifting resources that we currently spend having police officers responding to those calls, and shifting those resources to men and women who don’t have guns, batons and uniforms.”
He noted: “I don’t think the people of Sacramento support a complete or near total defunding of the police department.”
Is the mayor right about that? I want to know. Write me at mbreton@sacbee.com or call me at 916-321-1096.
5. Meanwhile, back at the pandemic...
Let’s wrap it up on a topic that has not left us – the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I am concerned because the numbers have come up and yet, the whole numbers have not gone up high enough to make me feel alarmed,” he said.
“There are 37 hospitalizations and 13 people in the ICU, compared to May 25 when there were nine people hospitalized and four people in the ICU,” he said.
“There were no deaths in the middle of May, there have been four deaths since May 24. That is troubling but I would not yet describe it as alarming.”
In a potential health hazard, Steinberg had more than 2,000 people amassed in front of his Greenhaven home on June 5 to protest police brutality and Floyd’s death. He did not come out because the organizers asked him to stay away. But Steinberg watched the entire event from inside his home, he said.
“It was surreal,” Steinberg said.
There has been a lot of that going around for the last three months.
