Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert has announced that the police officers who murdered Stephon Clark in his grandmother’s backyard would not be charged. Under California’s current standard for deadly force, officers can kill people if they feel a “reasonable” threat. Due to this unacceptably weak standard, fewer than 1% of officers are prosecuted for killing someone in the line of duty.
The California legislature is considering AB 392 (the California Act to Save Lives), which would change police use of force policies so that officers would have to de-escalate however possible before resorting to lethal force.
Stephon would be alive today if the officers had followed this policy. So would Mario Woods, Oscar Grant, Alex Nieto, Sahleem Tindle, Willie McCoy, and far too many others, mostly young men of color.
Call your CA state assemblymember and demand that they support AB 392!