Funeral services are being held today for Stephon Clark, the 22-year-old father of two shot dead on March 18 by two Sacramento Police Department officers investigating a complaint about broken car windows. Clark was in the back yard of his grandmother’s home, where he and his family also lived, at the time of the shooting. The officers, when they came upon him, thought he had a gun and fired 10 shots each at him, killing him instantly. But the object Clark had in his hands was a cell phone.
The community erupted in protest, as did others within and outside of Sacramonte, after Clark’s death, charging a coverup and demanding an open investigation that would lay bare all the facts.
Leid Stories returns to an earlier discussion—a need for new tactics in civil-rights advocacy, especially in police killings.