On Sunday March 18, 2018, two Sacramento Police officers shot and killed a man. The young man, Stephon Clark, was a 22 (or 23 depending on the source) year old black man, who was not armed. To listen to Black Lives Matter or the deceased man’s family, you would think he was a fine upstanding young man, a pillar of society, who was seated in his backyard praying when two racist cops burst into the yard and shot him without an ounce of provocation. Some news outlets referred to him as a “stay at home dad” and talked about how he was a “loving father who was turning his life around.” To say the headlines were incendiary is an understatement.
Despite what Black Lives Matter, the mainstream media and many of the ‘protesters’ would have you believe, Clark was not an innocent young man who played no role in his own demise. He was a multiple time convicted felon, with priors for robbery, drugs, domestic violence, human trafficking, and illegal possession of a gun. He was indeed the father of two kids, whom he did not have custody of. He was staying with his grandmother crashing at his grandmother’s from time to time after his most recent release from jail approximately one month before he was killed.
Even the ultra-liberal Sacramento Bee was forced to admit that Clark was not the angel that protesters are portraying when they said the following. Bear in mind, these are only charges that were filed against him since he turned 18, which is just four (4) short years.
“A search of Sacramento Superior Court records found four related cases for a Stephan Alonzo Clark. The most recent were two felony counts of domestic abuse, to which Clark – who preferred to go by the name Stephon – pleaded guilty and agreed to complete a treatment program. The court record also shows a 2008 robbery charge, and charges in 2013 for possession of a firearm and possession of a controlled substance.”
On the night that Clark was killed, he was seen breaking into parked cars by a neighbor who called 911. Sacramento Police units responded, as did the Sacramento Sheriff’s helicopter. Upon locating him, the helicopter observed him breaking into a home by smashing out a rear window to the home. After doing that, he fled on foot, jumped a fence into the backyard of another home, where he began walking toward the street. About half way to the street, he was contacted by a Sacramento Police officer who told him to stop and show his hands. Clark instead turned and ran back into the backyard of the home. The original officer and one other chased him into the backyard and as they rounded the corner, they saw Clark across the yard reportedly pointing something at them. The officers thought is was a gun, as is evidenced both by they shouting “gun” on the body camera video, but also based on their actions as viewed from the helicopter FLIR footage. Seconds later, as Clark moved toward the officers, they opened fire shooting him. He died from his wounds. No gun was found on him, but a cell phone was. They determined he was apparently holding the cellphone which the officers mistook for a gun.
Since that shooting happened, there have been ‘protests’ nearly every day in downtown Sacramento. At one point, ‘protesters’ marched onto northbound Interstate 5 and stopped traffic. They climbed onto vehicle and vandalized CHP cars that responded. Twice in the same week, they surrounded the Golden One Center, where the Sacramento Kings play, and prevented attendees from entering the arena for a game. After the first incident, the Kings even made a public statement in which they espoused solidarity with the protesters, even wearing warm up jerseys with Clark’s name on them, but that did not dissuade the ‘protesters’ from shutting down another game the next day.
However, before those ‘protesters’ marched to the Golden One Center, they first overran an open to the public Sacramento City Council meeting where they acted like complete buffoons, with Stevante Clark (the dead guy’s brother) strutting around and jumping up onto the dais, getting right into the pandering Mayor Steinberg’s face and screaming at him. He continued by fronting off the Chief of Police and declaring that Steinberg is no longer the mayor. It was a total sh!t show, and luckily for us, CBS 13 was good enough to put the complete, unedited video of it on their YouTube channel.
Finally, after nearly six (6) minutes of total loss of control, Steinberg announced a 15 minute recess, that way he would not be present when the cops cleared out the rabble. After all, forcing people who cannot follow the rules out of the building would not be very inclusive of him…
Later, the group of protesters that were forced from City Hall marched down the street where they proceeded to shut down the Kings game as I previously mentioned. The open public city council meeting resumed and, while most of the speakers I saw appeared to be educated and well spoken, many of their comments seemed only partially if at all related to the topic that they were supposedly there to discuss. As the night continued, the speakers became more and more unhinged, and eventually the whole thing was shut down more than two hours early as police made an arrest or two and had to forcefully remove others. Steinberg’s hands off, open dialogue policy is not remotely working, just like hands off policies never do.
At one point during the multiple hours long open public council meeting, one of the people speaking asked the audience to pull out their cell phones and point them at the mayor. One of the ‘protesters’ in attendance obliged and was captured on camera doing so. Now, I would like to personally thank this man for proving a point that many people have tried to make, that given the proper pose, as exemplified by this man, in the dark of night while chasing a man who was seen breaking into cars and a house, you round a corner and see something similar to this, it can be quite easy to mistake a man pointing a cell phone at you as someone pointing a gun at you.
Black Lives Matter Sacramento has promised that their protest’s will continue at least through Clark’s funeral, which now boasts the Reverend race baiter extraordinaire Al Sharpton as the guest speaker who will provide the eulogy.
While it has been largely under/unreported by the media, these ‘protests’ have not been as peaceful as some would have you believe. While they have by no means devolved into what happened in Ferguson or Baltimore, there have been numerous violent felonies committed. ‘Protesters’ violently attacked a counter protester (cop supporter) outside of the Golden One center. ‘Protesters’ surrounded multiple different police vehicles as they left the Sacramento jail, which happens to be located in downtown Sacramento. In fact, an officer from an outside agency reportedly called for Code 3 cover as they got surrounded while trying to leave. ‘Protesters’ attacked a woman who was driving down the street because she did not want to stop for their ‘protest,’ and in my opinion, she was well within her rights as those ‘protesters’ are breaking multiple laws when they flood the street and prevent people from freely travelling where they so choose.
In fact, I would argue that legally speaking, those protesters are committing a false imprisonment of every single motorist they have trapped. The police should be arresting every one of those fools, but instead they are treating them with kid gloves.
Anyone in the #Sacramento area who gets stuck in ‘protests’ for #StephonClark, if ‘protesters’ prevent you from leaving by blocking the roadways, I suggest you call @SacPolice and file a False Imprisonment report.
PC236 is a Misdemeanor. What they are doing is a crime
— Deputy Matt (@BangSwitchMatt) March 27, 2018
If you want to protest, I fully support your right to do so, but your rights do not trump those of people who are completely uninvolved in the matter. You do not get to commit crimes just because you are angry. Letting these ‘protesters’ continue to act like this reminds me of parents of that spoiled rotten kid who is flopping around on the floor having a temper tantrum while the parents offer them bribes to stop acting like that. What that spoiled brat needs is a smack on the ass, and that is what these ‘protesters’ need also. Law and order applies to all people equally and cares not about skin color. It is time the people in charge in Sacramento start enforcing the law instead of making excuses for a group of law breakers just because of their skin color.
Oh yeah, by the way, those two racist cops who shot the poor innocent church going choir boy I mentioned at the start of this, one of them just happens to be black… Maybe, just maybe, this shooting had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the dead guy being a criminal doing stupid criminal things.
And just in case no one is aware, there are actually guns disguised to look just like a cell phone. In fact, the department I work for has sent out officer safety bulletins describing them and included pictures of them, just like the picture of the .380ACP cell phone gun below.
If you were previously unaware of the cell phone gun, take 45 seconds and watch this clip (starts at 4:44 mark just in case the link doesn’t work properly). The guys in this video is pretty much foresaw exactly what happened in this situation.
For those who have not seen the video of the shooting, I include the raw footage of the incident from both officer’s body cameras and the helicopter’s FLIR footage in the following video where I breakdown the shooting.
