Stephon Clark Never Wants to Call 911 Again

A protester holds a photo of Stephon Clark during a Blackness Lives Matter protest in Sacramento on March 22, 2018. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A protester holds a photo of Stephon Clark during a Black Lives Thing protest in Sacramento on March 22, 2018.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Updated at xi:15 p.m. ET

Nearly a year after Sacramento police fatally shot Stephon Clark, a 22-year-erstwhile unarmed black man who died in his grandmother's backyard, District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert announced on Saturday that the 2 officers who killed him volition non face up criminal charges.

In a news conference that lasted more than an hr, the district attorney walked the public through evidence gathered past investigators and discussed the police that governs when police force officers are justified in using deadly strength.

"The police requires that nosotros gauge the reasonableness of an officer'south actions based upon the circumstances confronting them at that moment of fourth dimension," Schubert began, speaking to a packed room of reporters inside a building across the street from her function'due south headquarters.

In the terminate, she said, it was clear that Sacramento police officers Jared Robinet and Terrence Mercadal did not commit a crime.

"Nosotros know [Clark] fled from the officers later being told to stop, we know that he continued into the backyard, and we know that when he continued into the backyard, he rounded that corner, and he went to the terminate of that k and he turned around," said Schubert, describing the moments leading up to the fatal shooting. "He didn't continue to abscond. He turned around and he was in a shooting opinion with his artillery extended."

The DA said the two officers "honestly, without hesitation, believed he had a gun" before they fired 20 shots at Clark, hitting him at least seven times.

Clark was killed March 18 after Sacramento constabulary responded to a 911 telephone call of a human being breaking car windows in the Due south Sacramento neighborhood of Meadowview. During Saturday'southward printing conference, Schubert said Deoxyribonucleic acid evidence confirmed that Clark was the private who broke the windows, and likewise smashed a home'southward sliding glass door with a cinder block.

Two officers arrived on the scene that nighttime, searched outside a nearby residence and, later on spotting Clark, eventually pursued him into a backyard — which they later learned was his grandmother's home — where they shot at him.

Afterward the shooting, Robinet and Mercadal said they thought Clark had a gun, only they only institute a cellphone at the scene.

On Sabbatum, Schubert said that one of the officers saw a "flash of light that he believed was the cage" of a gun in the seconds before the shooting, and that "Clark had in fact advanced at the officers" before they fired.

Clark'south death sparked weeks of demonstrations and immediate calls for the district attorney to bring criminal charges against the officers. Subsequently the police section released body-photographic camera videos from the shooting, demonstrators spilled into the streets of downtown Sacramento, at one bespeak bringing traffic on a major freeway to a end and, afterward, blocking thousands of fans from entering a Sacramento Kings game.

After the commune attorney's declaration, the Clark family unit reacted with anger, accusing Schubert of a "smear campaign."

"I don't care if he was a criminal. None of that matters," Clark's mother, Sequette Clark, said outside the habitation where her son was killed. "What matters is how those officers came with lethal strength around a corner, on a vandalism phone call, after my son and gunned him down — when he had cypher but a cellphone in his hand."

The district attorney's decision not to charge the officers is based on a review of the Sacramento Police Department's own investigation into the shooting, which was completed in Oct of last year.

California Attorney Full general Xavier Becerra's part is also conducting an independent review of the Clark example, at the request of Sacramento Chief of Police force Daniel Hahn.

Sacramento law'southward internal review of whether Robinet or Mercadal should be fired for violating department policy is ongoing, co-ordinate to Hahn, and the chief has said that it volition non exist finished until the attorney general's review is complete.

"He was distraught"

Schubert's presentation of her office's findings included a surprising amount of personal information nearly Stephon Clark, including an indication that he may accept been contemplating suicide in the days leading upward to the shooting.

Schubert also revealed that, two days before his death, on March xvi, the female parent of Clark's children, Salena Manni, chosen the police force on Clark to report concrete abuse.

"The police took a report, they documented her injuries and they took photographs at the scene," Schubert said, adding that at the time of Clark'due south expiry, he "was arrestable for this incident of domestic violence equally well equally probation violations."

She then described text messages, Internet searches and drafts of emails seized from Clark's cellphone, which she said showed he feared he would be arrested. The DA said other messages bespeak that the mother of his children was threatening that Clark would never see his children again.

Investigators also discovered communications on Clark'south cellphone indicating that he sent Manni text messages implying that he wanted to kill himself, including photos of him with several Xanax pills.

Phone call logs show that Clark tried to call Manni 76 times in a period of 12 hours afterwards the domestic violence incident.

"He was distraught and had searched suicide websites," Schubert said. "Y'all can see that there were many things weighing heavily on his heed."

The Clark family and customs members pointed out that, past Schubert'south own access, the police officers pursuing Clark on March 18 did not know who he was — nor did they accept any idea that he feared arrest or was because suicide.

"I experience similar she was charging him with his own murder," said Quenta Givens, who lives downwardly the street from where Clark was killed. "Why are we judging him? He'due south already been killed. We should be judging the cops — that'southward who did information technology!"

Erstwhile Sacramento law chief Rick Braziel says Schubert might take been trying to make the statement that Clark committed "suicide by cop," a scenario that occurs when someone who wants to die provokes a law enforcement officeholder into killing them.

"I honestly thought that ... when I was watching it, [that] she was going to talk nigh how he had planned that to occur," Braziel said of the DA's presentation.

While taking questions from reporters after her announcement, Schubert said that she was not suggesting Clark wanted to commit suicide-past-cop. Her office did not answer to a request by CapRadio request to further discuss the issue.

The Clark family declined to comment on whether the fellow might have been contemplating suicide.

During her own press conference on Saturday evening, Manni said she had no warning that the DA would reveal personal data from Clark'southward cellphone, and was angered that the DA shared details nigh her and Clark'southward individual communications.

"A modern-24-hour interval lynching"

In response to Saturday's annunciation, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg repeated the apology he delivered to the Clark family at his Country of the Metropolis accost concluding calendar month.

"Today, the district attorney said she focused on a single question: Did the officers who shot Stephon Clark commit a crime? Her respond was, 'No,' " Steinberg said. "Our community and its leadership take dissimilar questions. Was the outcome wrong? Was the outcome unacceptable? The reply to both questions is yes."

The mayor said he would focus not simply on changing policies within the metropolis, only the country rules around utilize of force, signaling his support for Assembly Bill 392, which would restrict when officers can utilize mortiferous force.

"I volition utilise my influence, my time, and my experience every bit a quondam legislative leader to help the parties change the standard to better protect both the customs and our officers," Steinberg said. "I practice not know whether a prevention standard would have changed this particular outcome. Merely I desire to change time to come outcomes. We all desire to change future outcomes. "

Sacramento Police Master Daniel Hahn said in a statement after the announcement that it was his department's "responsibility to continually examine all our policies and practices for any opportunity to improve how we police our community. We are committed to that on-going work as a permanent part of who we are as a department."

Presently later the DA'due south printing briefing, religious leaders gathered outside Sacramento City Hall to voice displeasure with Schubert'southward determination — and especially with the DA's conclusion to reveal data discovered on Clark's cellphone that he may have been suicidal.

"This was a modern-day lynching in the urban center of Sacramento and the district attorney should exist recalled for these shameful actions," Pastor Kevin Kitrell Ross of Unity of Sacramento Church said.

Inside City Hall, Tamara Bennett with This Is Pentecost Fellowship Ministries expressed gratitude toward metropolis government and the law department.

"I appreciate the chief of police for being very aboveboard and honest during this process," Bennett said. " I too appreciate all of the brothers and sisters of the community who came to these meetings every single week to exist able to come up with something so that our city will be healed and our metropolis volition be safety."

Pastor Les Simmons expressed dismay at the manner that the district attorney handled the announcement.

"I'1000 first just heartbroken, as a black man, as a Sacramentan that has heard her demonize Stephon Clark and so not hold these officers answerable," he said. "I recall our community is actually hurting right at present."

But Sacramento Police force Officers Association President Tim Davis said that Robinet and Mercadal acted according to their preparation and within the premises of the law.

"While this is a tragedy, you lot know, no officer ever wants to accept a life," Davis said. "They're doing the best job they can in these split-second decisions and what nosotros want to exercise is give them more resource and training. and that is how we'll be able to reduce these in the time to come, not sending cops to prison."

"We're all sad right now"

During Schubert's 60 minutes-long presentation, members of Blackness Lives Affair's local chapter congregated outside, listening to the DA present her office's findings on their phones.

Every few minutes, the grouping's founder, Tanya Faison, wiped abroad rain that had accumulated on her smartphone's screen while continuing on the sidewalk.

"I expected information technology to be bad, but not every bit bad every bit it was, and then information technology kept getting worse," Faison said of the DA's press conference.

She added that divulging Clark'south personal text letters and Internet search history was inappropriate and unnecessary.

"I'm disgusted, and it's disrespectful," Faison said. "The mother of his child was completely disrespected."

Onethia Riley, who volunteers with the local chapter, wasn't surprised by the announcement, but was disappointed past what she calls the "character assassination of Stephon Clark, the boldness and the lack of compassion toward his family."

"I'yard traumatized by it," Riley said.

Sonia Lewis, who co-leads Black Lives Matter with Faison, called out the commune attorney for discussing the private information. Just she also argued that information technology proved that Clark needed mental health care, "not to be shot."

"At that place were and so many other solutions that could have come out of this," Lewis said. "But the 1 thing that we know for sure is that he should non exist expressionless and those officers should be fired."

Later the press conference, Black Lives Matter announced a sit-in at the Sacramento Police Department station on Freeport Boulevard, where nearly 100 people showed up.

Faison said the mood was melancholy. "It feels similar a acuity. Information technology feels somber. So, that's why we haven't chanted much. We are all deplorable right now," she said.

"We need to acknowledge the difficult truth"

Also on Saturday, ii of California's iii most powerful elected officials vowed to rewrite the state law that governs when police officers can use mortiferous strength.

"This must be a time for modify," said Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement that called for "systemic reform."

"We we demand to acknowledge the difficult truth — our criminal justice system treats young black and Latino men and women differently than their white counterparts," the governor added.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego who'southward been convening negotiations between law enforcement and civil rights groups on new use-of-force legislation, said in her own statement that lawmakers owe it to Clark's family "to deliver on a utilize-of-force model for California and the nation going forrad." She said the latest development makes her "committed more than than ever before" to changing the constabulary.

And California Sen. Kamala Harris, who is also pursuing the Democratic Party nomination for president, wrote on Twitter that "Stephon Clark should however be alive."

"Today'southward news is a tragic and all too painful reminder that our criminal justice system is deeply flawed and lacks accountability. Our fight for justice continues," Harris wrote.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/02/699719214/officers-in-stephon-clark-shooting-wont-be-charged-says-sacramento-d-a

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