Protest at sacramento city hall as speakers condemn killing by police

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March 28, 2018 5:39 AM

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Hundreds of protesters temporarily took over the main foyer at Sacramento City Hall on Tuesday evening to protest the death of Stephon Clark...

The City Council held a special meeting Tuesday evening to hear public comments about the shooting; it was a night of tears for many, and a night of rage for others.

As black community leaders explained their frustrations to the city’s leadership within the council’s public chamber, about 300 protesters outside in the foyer chanted raucously for about an hour, while police officers clad in riot gear looked on.

“You shoot us down, we shut you down!” they shouted.

At the top of the meeting, Mayor Darrell Steinberg spoke emphatically about the anger and grief in the community and promised to press the Police Department for answers about the protocols and policies that led to Clark’s death.

Outrage over Clark’s death initially centered on the fact that he was shot in his grandmother’s yard, and intensified when it was revealed that he was shot at 20 times and that a helicopter unit was dispatched in response to a routine vandalism call. Though the officers on the scene initially said Clark, 22, was armed, they later found he was holding his cellphone, not a weapon.

Xavier Becerra, the state’s attorney general, announced on Tuesday that his office would oversee the investigation into Clark’s death and would review the department’s training and protocols. Chief Daniel Hahn of the Sacramento Police Department welcomed the state’s involvement. Hahn is Sacramento’s first black police chief.

“You’re killing us. You’re killing us. It’s genocide, it feels like genocide,” Tanya Faison, the leader of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, said at the meeting. “Those officers need to be fired.”

The ambiguous circumstances surrounding Clark’s death have stirred grief, rage and fear among black people in California’s capital who feel they are regularly discriminated against by the city and county police departments.

From a national vantage point, Clark’s death is the latest example of young black men being killed by police officers.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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