Posted by Jack
5 Mar 2019 – Upon hearing that no charges will be filed against Sac PD officers for killing Stephon Clark, a large crowd made up of Black Lives Matters protesters, supporters and family of Clark’s rushed into the City Council Chambers and disrupted a meeting. For a time it was pandemonium. One of the protesters leaped onto a table and started yelling threats, however police were prepared and responded quickly to restore order. 84 arrests were made.
Background: Two Sacramento officers who shot Clark were responding to a report that a man had broken car windows and was hiding in a backyard. The person who called 911 told police the man — later identified as Clark — had jumped a fence. Police discovered he’d moved through two backyards into another property, Schubert said.
The prosecutor went through a lengthy presentation involving body cameras, helicopter surveillance video and photos. She said Clark vandalized three cars, moved to a backyard and broke a sliding glass door to a room where an 89-year-old man was watching television. He then jumped to another yard.
Directed to Clark’s location by the sheriff’s helicopter, the officers chased him to a backyard, one that belonged to his grandmother.
“Hey, show me your hands,” the lead officer said. “Stop. Stop.”
Clark was about 30 feet away behind a picnic table, the prosecutor said.
“Show me your hands,” an officer said, breathing heavily. “Gun. Gun.”
About 20 shots are heard in the body camera recording. An officer says, “He is down. No movement. We’re going to need additional units.”
Schubert described Clark as taking a shooting stance and officers firing after they saw a flash of light that one believed came from a gun. A cellphone was found underneath Clark’s body.
The tests showed Clark likely had done cocaine at some point in the two or three days before he died, but the drug had flushed out of his system by the time he was killed. Clark had a mix of drugs, including marijuana and alcohol in his body and it likely altered Clark’s state of mind, independent experts said.
“All of this stuff, especially taken together at that concentration, would impair a lot of people,” said Dr. Maurice Preter, a forensic neuropsychiatrist and professor at Columbia University and the Ichan School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai.” Sac-Bee
The DA concluded that under the circumstances there was no wrong doing on the part of the officers, that it was just a tragic series of events that began with Clark’s criminal conduct. However, the FBI has decided to investigate the matter to determine if Clark’s civil rights were violated. This has not tempered the rhetoric coming from the protesters, many of whom said this clash with police is not over.
Well, something is not right. Here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave … car burglars, even car burglars who run from the police, are supposed to go to jail … not get shot 20 times by terrified police.
Libby, this time I actually get where you are coming from, I really do. I’ve had this conversation before. How could you possibly understand how something like this could happen?
I hope you will continue reading, because I am going to speak to you from the heart and from my own personal experience.
When one of the two cops in pursuit was black and one was white and they both arrived at the same decision to shoot you can’t say he was shot because he was black.
This man was pursued by the officers in the night, under poor visibility. Was he a car burglar or a home burglar? Nobody knew precisely what was going on, but it was strongly suspected he was caught in the commission of a crime and he ran.
The officers must assume they are in a dangerous situation. The person they are chasing could be armed with a gun or knife and they would be foolish to assume he is not armed. So they are going to draw their weapons when the man is cornered. They are going to order him to show his hands and to stay where he is until they see what they are dealing with.
A split second decision often determines who lives or dies. Instead of complying with the officers commands the suspect goes into a shooting position crouch and simulated raising a weapon, but its not, its a cell phone, but the officers don’t know and why should they think its anything but a weapon? Who draws a cell phone? Only some guy crazy enough to bust out windows in cars and an apartment while high on drugs and alcohol, that’s who! He was shot because in that moment of tension, in broken light, this weirdo did exactly the wrong thing and he was shot by a black cop and a white cop. Why, why would he do that? We’ll never know why, we’ll only know that he did it and it was caught on video. It was a stupid move and it cost him his life.
Terrified cops Libby, really? That is an incredibly unfair and disrespectful thing to say without one shred of evidence to support that insult. Look, they were in a foot pursuit for 30 seconds, and I can tell you right now, they’ve been through this many, many times before. I can tell you that things went down so fast there was not time think of a whole lot except for what is going down right in front of you.
How long does it take for 3 officers to fire a semi-automatic pistol 8 times? That answer is between 1 and 2 seconds. Then it was over.
Think it over Libby, what would you have done?
“Terrified cops Libby, really?”
20 rounds? … they speak volumes, Jack.
“Think it over Libby, what would you have done?”
I would have let him get to his Grandma’s house and come back the next day (or the day after, or the day after that) with a warrant. He was nothing but a GD druggie car burglar, fer pity’s sake.
Libby, but how would you have done all that in the time allowed? That’s just absurd. You are not going to call off a foot pursuit and go for a warrant following a 30 second foot chase! You don’t know any facts yet, you don’t what you have, maybe he is just a vandal or maybe he just murdered somebody? The cops don’t have ESP! They didn’t know he was running into his grandmothers backyard and they sure didn’t know who they were chasing. All of these factual things came to light after the suspect resisted arrest and went into a shooting stance while holding a cell phone. Then in just 1 or 2 seconds – he was down, hit 7 or 8 times, and he died shortly afterward. Libby sometimes you got to think it through and not rely on your knee jerk logic.
“You are not going to call off a foot pursuit ….”
Why ever not?
The whole nasty business went down because the cops involved COULD NOT THINK. Terror will do that to you. It’s terror that makes you believe a cell phone is a gun, because, they really don’t look anything alike, do they?
“… they sure didn’t know who they were chasing.” Again, you make me wonder if you were ever a cop. Cops, who are doing their job well, do get to know who the neighborhood druggie burglars are. They may very well have known who they were chasing … or realized it … if they stopped to think about it.
It boils down to this: the situation wants work. I want to do it. You do not.
It stated above the officers involved were wearing body cameras and they were recording, what does the video show?
Have the recordings been made public?
Being the incident occurred at night in a private back yard was there adequate lighting for video capture?
If they had body cameras recording but the can’t record in the dark perhaps the body cameras should have a built in lamp or use F.L.I.R.
I have on quite a few occasions been stopped by police but I have never been harmed in any way because I am co-operative, I understand that cops in our country shoot folks a lot (even though it is actually a very safe profession) only rarely will any of the shootings be judged as wrongdoing so it is one own interest to not make the situation worse.
That being said many cops I have encountered are rude, arrogant, overbearing assholes who are looking for any excuse to kick ass & take names cause they enjoy flexing their authority but, that is just more of a reason why Mr. Clark should have just raised his hands and dropped the phone.