The Sacramento Cop-Out

Salena Manni, the fiancee of Stephon Clark, who was shot and killed by Sacramento police in 2018, cries as she discusses the decision to not file charges against the two officers involved, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif. It was in effect when Stephon Clark went running into his grandmother’s backyard nearly a year ago, pursued by two Sacramento police officers who shot and killed him there. The report indicated that the contents of Clark’s cell phone, the same one that the cops mistook for a gun that night, showed that he’d been doing searching for “information related to suicide the day before and the day of the fatal shooting” and had sent a text to Manni on the 17th that read, “Let’s fix our family or I’m taking all of these.” Pictured, according to Schubert’s report, were a handful of Xanax pills.Even if Clark hoped that the pursuit would end in his death, it isn’t necessarily legal for police in California to help him commit “suicide by cop.” That phrase, a convenient fiction since it absolves those doing the actual killing, has been used to both explain why people are the victims of officer-involved shootings and to excuse the officers who perpetrate the acts. She did the latter on Sunday and impugned the mentally ill in the process by insinuating that Clark’s desperation would cause him to act criminally and to put police in a life-threatening position.Stevante Clark, the brother of Stephon Clark who was killed by police last year, speaks during a news conference at the Genesis Church in Sacramento, Calif., on March 3rd 2019.Even now, 352 days after the incident, we still don’t know how many times Clark was shot.