Anger, frustration at wake for unarmed man killed by police

SACRAMENTO — Family, friends and strangers, some expressing anger and frustration, gathered in Sacramento on Wednesday for a public wake for 22-year-old Stephon Clark, an unarmed man shot by police in his grandparents’ backyard.

Some attendees wore black shirts calling for justice, while one woman held up a clenched fist as she exited the Bayside of South Sacramento church. The wake was largely quiet until Clark’s brother, Stevante Clark, shouted at the media to leave before being picked up and carried away.

The outburst came a day after he disrupted a Sacramento City Council meeting and chanted his brother’s name at Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

Some said the two police officers who shot Clark should be criminally charged, while other mourners said they could envision their own families in Clark’s family’s place.

“This feels like the 60s, it doesn’t feel like 2018. We’ve definitely regressed,” said Cynthia Brown, a friend of Clark’s grandfather who brought her 10and 15-year-old grandsons to the wake. “To me, (they) could be Stephon Clark.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to deliver the eulogy at Clark’s funeral on Thursday.

Tensions remain high in California’s capital city following the March 18 shooting. Two police officers who were responding to a report of someone breaking car windows fatally shot him in his grandparents’ backyard. Police say they believe Clark was the suspect and he ran when a police helicopter responded, then did not obey officers’ orders.

Police say they thought Clark was holding a gun when he moved toward them, but he was found only with a cellphone.

Many mourners weren’t buying that narrative.

“You always feel threatened — you’re a law enforcement officer, it comes with your job title,” said Rahim Wasi. “That doesn’t give you a right to go running around like Clint Eastwood in a movie.”

Some of Clark’s relatives were more conciliatory.

“We’re not mad at all the law enforcement. We’re not trying to start a riot,” said Shernita Crosby, Stephon Clark’s aunt. “What we want the world to know is that we got to stop this because black lives matter.”

Cousin Suzette Clark said the family wants Stephon Clark remembered as “more than just a hashtag.”

FAMILY COURTESY PHOTO VIA AP This March 18, photo, courtesy of the family, shows Stephon Clark at 5:20 p.m. in the afternoon before he died in a hail of police gunfire in the backyard of his grandmother Sequita Thompson’s home in Sacramento. On Monday, Thompson called for changes...