As part of its continuing coverage of the aftermath, The OBSERVER spoke with Sacramento’s first Black police chief, Daniel Hahn, last week about his response to the protests, his thoughts on Floyd’s death at the hands of law enforcement and the reform that people here at home and across the country say they want.

I saw a picture the other day, I don’t remember what city it was in, but it was a White woman flipping off two Black police officers during the protests.

If you look at the protests over the last several years, both the Stephon Clark protest and these protests, the people who get it the most in our department, when they’re on the lines of a protest or some of these events, are the Black officers.

That’s a large part of your job and if the vast majority of your calls are minorities — Hispanics and Blacks — over time it would be pretty natural for you to start thinking ‘people in this community, they’re not very good people because all I ever see are the really bad, horrific things people are doing to each other in this community,’ so it’s really important for us to have and find experiences where we can show officers that there are good people in the community.

Q: On one hand, you’ve shared the same space as Stevante Clark, the brother of Stephon Clark, who maintains you should have fired the two officers who killed his brother, and that seemed to be progress, then on the other hand Black leaders were chastised for kneeling and marching with you recently in Oak Park, by folks who said ‘how dare you walk with the police officers if we’re protesting against them and their actions.’

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