84 Radical Activists Arrested In Sacramento At Stephon Clark Protest

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | NoisyRoom.net

84 people were arrested in eastern Sacramento last night. They were protesting the shooting of Stephon Clark, 22, last March and the decision by the district attorney to not charge the two officers who shot and killed him.

A little background on the shooting From Blue Lives Matter:

Schubert’s decision not to charge the officers who shot Clark came after an almost year-long investigation by the Sacramento Police Department, an investigation by the California Department of Justice, and an expert consultant.

The district attorney held a press conference on March 2, during which she explained that investigators had learned that Clark was suicidal when he was fatally shot by police officers on March 18, 2018.

She explained that two days prior, Clark had been involved in a domestic violence incident with the mother of his children, and that he was wanted by police for that and a felony probation violation related to it.

Demonstrators in California took to the East Sacramento streets on Monday to march in protest of the decision to not charge Sacramento police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark last year. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Schubert said investigators had discovered a series of text messages on Clark’s phone in which his former girlfriend said he was going to jail for the rest of his life, and said she would testify against him.

Police found numerous internet searches he had made for ways to commit suicide, and Clark sent his former girlfriend a picture of a pile of Xanax pills and threatened to take them just hours before he was shot.

Schubert said Clark had broken out three car windows, and smashed his grandparents’ neighbor’s sliding glass door with a cinderblock prior to encountering the police that night, but stole nothing.

A police helicopter and officers on the ground spotted Clark as he moved along the side of a house, later identified as his grandparents’ home.

The officers ordered Clark to show his hands and stop, but Clark fled from officers into the backyard of the home.

Police form a barrier to block demonstrators in East Sacramento. Andrew Nixon/Capital Public Radio

Both officers pursued Clark. The suspect then turned in a shooting stance and advanced towards officers with an object extended towards them.

Schubert said Clark advanced from about 30 feet away to being only 16 feet away from officers before they opened fire.

In the bodycam video, you could hear an officer yell, “Gun, gun, gun” as Clark took the shooting stance.

One of the officers later said that he saw a flash of light which he believed to be muzzle flash from a gun being fired. The other officer said he thought he saw a reflection of light on a metallic object, Schubert said.

The bodycam video captured the flash of light but the source of the light was unclear.

The object in Clark’s hand was later identified as a cell phone.

A forensic examination of the phone later showed that Clark was not recording the officers at the time of the shooting.

The bodycam showed the officers talking immediately after the shooting, discussing if they were hit and how to safely remove what they believed to be a gun.

A toxicology report showed that Clark had alcohol, Xanax, codeine, hydrocodone, marijuana, and cocaine metabolite in his blood.


Demonstrators stand on the 51st Street bridge over Highway 50 after a protest in East Sacramento.
Andrew Nixon/Capital Public Radio

The mob of protesters started out at Trader Joe’s grocery store. Then they marched through an upscale, white neighborhood before they tried to shut down a bridge over Highway 50.

Of course, Black Lives Matter was in the thick of it. “We’ve had protests in other neighborhoods and this kind of response has not happened,” said Tanya Faison, the founder of the Sacramento Black Lives Matter chapter. “It proves that everything our DA has said, everything our chief has said and everything our mayor has said was all words.”

These thugs weren’t just marching… they were destroying property as they went. They were keying cars. The protesters were ordered by the police ten separate times to disperse after property owners complained. That took place over two hours before they were finally arrested.

Organizers of the protest at that point urged them to disperse but a large group of them did not listen and moved down 51st street to a bridge above Highway 50 instead. As they moved onto the bridge, police blocked them and started making arrests.

78 of the 84 arrested were on the bridge. Three clergy members were arrested and so were three journalists who were later released.

The sidewalk was lined with dozens of people who sat with their hands twist-tied behind their backs, waiting to be loaded into vans. They were transported to an off-site location — later identified as Cal Expo, the site of the California State Fair — and processed. From there, they would be either cited or arrested.

“I was following the marchers as they crossed the freeway overpass on 51st Street,” Sacramento Bee reporter Dale Kalser said. “It became apparent as we got to the other side [of the bridge] that there was nowhere to go and that the police had basically sealed everything off.”

“There were 50, 60, 70 people all just sort of cordoned off into this small area at the south end of the overpass,” Kalsersaid. “They just came and started detaining everyone, one by one. And I got caught up in that.”

Scott Rodd of the Sacramento Business Journal and William Coburn of the Sacramento State Hornet were also among those arrested and then let go.

Police expected protests after the announcement not to charge the two police officers over the shooting. Those arrested included pastor Les Simmons, a prominent activist for the Clark cause. Other clergy members were also arrested, as were college students who were part of a group that recently held a sit-in protest that shut down the Arden Fair Mall. 

The arrests surprised many of the activists who left after the initial dispersal orders from police. Make no mistake, many of the protesters were communists and militant racists.

“I’m pissed, I’m angry. I’m frustrated,” said Berry Accius, an organizer with Voice of the Youth. “I thought everything was cool, we were about to end the protest … we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish and to get a phone call 30 or 40 minutes later and hearing my comrades, some of my friends, [pastor] Les Simmons, some of my young people that I was with protesting shutting down the mall have been arrested today, and all for what?”

The two officers who shot Clark were accused of racism. One officer is black, the other is white. For all the world, this looks like suicide by cop to me and the police were justified in their response.

But communists and radicals never let an emergency go to waste. And they are using this boy’s death to stir up racial animosity, hatred for police officers, and chaos in the streets. It’s textbook Marxism and vintage California these days.

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