Sacramento Mayor Steinberg addresses protests, policing in Racial Justice Speaker Series

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg ’84 discussed his approaches to fighting police brutality and systemic racism in a Sept. 23 virtual talk delivered as part of UC Davis Law’s ongoing Racial Justice Speaker Series.

Dean Kevin R. Johnson introduced Steinberg, formerly California State Senate president pro tem, as "one of Sacramento’s most accomplished public servants.”

Johnson said he invited Steinberg, UC Davis Law’s 2016 Distinguished Alumnus Award recipient, to be part of the series “to get the perspective of someone running a city about the various policing issues he is trying to figure out.”

Steinberg began by acknowledging the nearly 200 students and alumni who had written a letter opposing his appearance in the speaker series, citing his record on racial issues.

"Thank you to the students who expressed their strong points of view. ... I certainly want to articulate to you, and everyone, where I stand on the issues of racial justice and policing, and what I am trying to do about bringing the change that is so desperately needed."

Steinberg said that in his long political career, “nothing for me has been as personally challenging to my own identity, my own thinking, and who I aspire to be as a leader than the deaths of Stephon Clark, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor.”

The 2018 police shooting of Clark in his grandmother’s Sacramento back yard elicited widespread protests in Sacramento and elsewhere. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert declined to press charges against the two officers involved, finding they “acted lawfully under the circumstances,” since they had believed, she said, that Clark’s cell phone was a weapon.

Clark’s death, along with Taylor’s killing by Louisville, Ky., police in March 2020, helped fuel cumulative outrage over police killings of Black men and women. That outrage erupted into mass protests after Floyd’s killing in May while in Minneapolis police custody, in an incident captured on video and shared widely.

On the day of Steinberg’s UC Davis Law address, news came that a Kentucky grand jury had indicted only one officer in Taylor’s shooting, and not for her death, but “wanton endangerment.” Steinberg called this “another injustice.”

Following Floyd’s death, Sacramento became “a place for consistent, principled protests by many, many young people who are rightfully demanding change,” Steinberg said. They included 2,000 or so people who staged a “die-in” in June near Steinberg’s Sacramento home to demand he do more for racial justice.

“The defensive part of me said, ‘Oh, wait a minute, look at everything I have done,’” Steinberg said. “’Look at the fact I was only one of two major city California mayors to endorse AB 392.” Introduced by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019, AB 392 redefined the circumstances under which the use of legal force by a peace officer is considered justifiable.

But his “real response,” Steinberg said, has been “to dig deeper, to ask myself what I can be doing different or better as a leader, to be a voice for the pain, for the injustice, and for the demand that we change what must be changed.”

Steinberg recently proposed the city hire an independent inspector general to conduct reviews of police shooting, use-of-force and sexual assault cases.

Steinberg also has proposed that “we redefine and shift funding away from the police department as we establish an office of community response” for 911 calls that do not involve criminal activity. Steinberg said $4 million already has been earmarked for that new office.

“I wish I had championed those (proposals) after Stephon Clark’s killing, instead of waiting until after George Floyd’s killing,” Steinberg said.

Although Steinberg “spoke out clearly and said the killing of Stephon Clark was wrong,” urged that $40 million in city funds per year go toward disadvantaged neighborhoods like Meadowview (where Clark was shot), and supported AB 392,  “I wish I had done more in terms of local initiatives” on policing.

During the Q&A portion of his talk, Steinberg responded to a question from Clark’s mother, Sequette, about how soon an independent inspector general would be hired. Steinberg said he expected the job to be posted soon.

“In Stephon’s case, what would have been different is we would have had an independent investigation in the city. ... there would have been a check on a process which is now an insular process,” Steinberg said.

UC Davis Law’s Racial Justice Speaker Series resumes Wednesday, Oct. 21 with a lecture by Georgetown Law Professor Robin Lenhardt.

Watch a video replay of the Steinberg event.