At around 9 a.m. on April 8, the police responded to a 911 call in which it was reported that a man was looking in the windows of homes off Center Parkway in South Sacramento. The cops who went to the scene said they found the man in the backyard of a home presumably hiding from them.
The police say they then detained, but did not arrest the man, and put him in the back of a squad car. While he was detained, the cops went to “investigate if a crime had been committed.” We should note that the police didn’t actually have evidence of a crime before he was detained in the car. When the man started kicking around in the car, the officers opened the door and he ran. The cops chased the man who reportedly ran into the nearby houses.
The man got into a house and allegedly grabbed two knives. According to the police—and this can actually mean many things— the man jumped into a backyard where he allegedly threatened a woman who went back into her house. Police then allege that he then broke into the home and the woman left through the front door. The man left the house and supposedly threatened another person before the cops found him behind a car in the front of a house.
According to the police, he ignored the demands to drop the knives and lunged at the officers. At this point three cops shot the man dead and are now on administrative leave.
Bryce Heinlein, sergeant with the Sacramento police department, spoke at a press conference near the scene. Liberation asked him if the cops were equipped with body cameras and if that footage would be released. He said that he didn’t know. His response was cagey considering that it is routine internal information as to which units have cameras and this should have been a primary point of the investigation which he claimed had already started. Heinlein defended his lack of information saying that there was still a lot of investigation to conduct.
A reporter asked him if there were other options like shooting him in the leg, tasers or some other non-lethal action. Heinlein responded: “There are options. In this case the officers felt that this wasn’t the case … the officers felt that this warranted deadly force.” It is no surprise that he defended the cops saying that they feared for their lives.
They aren’t releasing the name of the victim yet, but they mentioned to the media that they know he had criminal violations in the past. People from the neighborhood said they recognized the victim as a regular person from the area.
Predominantly people of color live in South Sacramento and in the Parkway-Mack road neighborhoods. This area has a high level of police presence; police intimidation is common. People passing by asked what had happened and most were alarmed when they heard the cops had killed a man. Some people were upset, others pointed out that they weren’t surprised because cops often kill people. People who lived in the area were concerned about the police use of violence, saying that the cops are too quick to use guns. They were thankful that there weren’t any kids in the area when the cops started shooting.
Despite any offense the deceased man may have committed, this case fits the pattern of increasingly militarized cops escalating the use of violence when other means are available. This incident is another reflection of a racist system that alienates people of color by using violence to deal with them instead of trying to deescalate the situation.
