Sacramento, Calif., Cops Who Shot And Killed An Unarmed #StephonClark Are Headed Back To The Streets

Dara Sharif

The two Sacramento, Calif., cops who shot and killed an unarmed Stephon Clark as he stood in his grand­par­ents’ back­yard last year not only will face no charges — but they have been cleared to return to duty.
Minutes after the Justice Department decid­ed not to pur­sue civ­il rights charges against Officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet in the March 2018 shoot­ing death of Clark, Sacramento police on Thursday announced they had cleared them as well, the Sacramento Bee reports.

Echoing the Justice Department’s find­ing of no cul­pa­bil­i­ty on Mercadal’s and Robinet’s parts, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn said, “The use of dead­ly force, in this case, was law­ful. Our inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed that there were no vio­la­tions of depart­ment pol­i­cy or train­ing.” But while that find­ing came as no sur­prise, no mat­ter how unwel­come for Clark’s fam­i­ly, Hahn’s next state­ment was jar­ring: “The offi­cers involved in this case will return to full, active duty.” Clark’s broth­er, Stevante Clark, in a Facebook mes­sage he post­ed Thursday as he and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers met with DOJ and Sacramento police offi­cials, expressed bit­ter­ness about the outcome.

“These peo­ple have failed when it comes to #Accountability,” he wrote, the Sacramento Bee reports, lat­er telling the paper: “I’m not sur­prised or shocked, we’ve been denied jus­tice for gen­er­a­tions. The only thing that caught me off guard, was Chief Hahn is let­ting one of the offi­cers back to patrol on the streets. That is fucked up. Our streets are not safe with a mur­der­er on the streets.”
Stephon Clark was only 22 when he was killed the night of March 18, 2018, as he stood in his grand­par­ents’ back­yard. Police who arrived on the scene after a report of some­one try­ing to break into cars in the neigh­bor­hood say they mis­took the cell­phone Clark was hold­ing for a gun when they opened fire. Clark’s death sparked protests and calls for jus­tice.
However, Sacramento’s dis­trict attor­ney ear­li­er this year also cleared the offi­cers. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert called Clark’s death “a tragedy,” but found that under the cir­cum­stances the police had a “rea­son­able belief that they were in immi­nent dan­ger.”
This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at https://​www​.the​root​.com/​s​a​c​r​a​m​e​n​t​o​-​c​a​l​i​f​-​c​o​p​s​-​w​h​o​-​s​h​o​t​-​a​n​d​-​k​i​l​l​e​d​-​a​n​-​u​n​a​r​m​e​d​-​1​8​3​8​5​0​9​200