Fatal police shooting of unarmed man fuels anger
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — Community members and activists gathered at Sacramento City Hall on Thursday to protest the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by police.
Black Lives Matter Sacramento organized the rally in honor of Stephon Clark, a 22-yearold who was shot Sunday night in his grandparents’ backyard, where he was staying.
The two officers yelled that they thought he had a gun in the moments before they shot him, according to audio from body camera footage released Wednesday by Sacramento police. But Clark was only holding a cellphone.
Footage from body cameras and an overhead helicopter does not clearly depict what Clark was doing just before police opened fire. Officers did not find a gun at the scene, and independent experts said the recordings raise more questions than they answer.
The officers appeared to legitimately believe they were in danger, several experts said, and if so the shooting was likely legally justified.
One officer is heard “doing a mental inventory to make sure there’s no holes in his body” because the officers appear to think Clark may have shot at them and missed, said Peter Moskos, a former police officer and assistant professor in the Department of Law and Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
But Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina and an expert on police use of force, said the officers may have a tough time explaining why they jumped to the conclusion that Clark had a gun.
“The officers are going to have an interesting time explaining why they perceived they were in fear of their lives,” Alpert said. “It’s going to be a stretch.”
He also questioned why an arriving backup officer had the two original officers turn off the microphones on their body cameras, eliminating what he called “important evidence.”
Sacramento police did not respond to requests for an explanation or whether muting the microphones violated department policy nor why the officers waited five minutes to help Clark once he was on the ground not moving.
In an ideal world, the two officers should have immediately provided first aid, said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “But that could be more the product of hope than reality,” he said, with the officers still in shock and worried about their own safety.