Buckle up for a wild one.
The nation is rethinking public safety, with major cities taking steps to defund the cops and Minneapolis dismantling its police department in earnest. So what’s happening in California?
On Wednesday, Sacramento City Council held a maddening emergency meeting, taking obvious measures to minimize and marginalize voices from the public and ultimately ending the session with milquetoast police ‘reforms’ that will simply not make the Sacramento Police Department any less violent or irresponsible.
The meeting began with police chief Daniel Hahn telling a story of a ~very dangerous~ Sacramento, and council members bandying about terms like “gang violence.” Then, when the head of Advance Peace–a proven community initiative geared toward giving at-risk children and young adults outlets that will turn them away from cyclical and retaliatory gun violence–council members Angelique Ashby and Larry Carr went on the offensive. They want more cops and fewer proven grassroots programs, you see.
It was all downhill from there, with council members extolling the virtues of the long-debunked #8cantwait initiative, the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission chair expressing his frustrations with a non-responsive city hall and, finally, the council resolving to create a toothless inspector general position for the purpose of “public safety accountability.”
No consideration whatsoever toward defunding the cops.
We try to keep our show around an hour, but sometimes it just strikes us that we need to dedicate more time toward a topic (see our episode with Conrad Crump as an example). This is one of those episodes. It’s long, but worth it.
Thanks for listening and, as always:
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Twitter: @youknowkempa, @guillotine4you, @ShanNDSTevens, @Flojaune
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