A 22-year-old African American man, Stephon Clark, was fatally shot by Sacramento police in his own backyard Sunday night, after police mistook his cell phone for a gun. Sacramento officials are questioning why police shot at an unarmed black man 20 times in his grandmothers backyard. According to the Los Angeles Times, police received a call that a six-foot-one man wearing a black hoodie and dark pants was breaking into vehicles, breaking car windows and was hiding in a backyard. Aided by a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department’s helicopter circling overhead, they found a man in a backyard at about 9:25 p.m. and directed police officers toward him. Deputies told police that the man had picked up a toolbar and broke a window to a home. Two arriving officers chased him into the backyard of his grandparents’ home, where he was staying. The department says he refused orders to stop and show his hands. He advanced toward the officers holding an object extended in front of him. The officers thought he was pointing a handgun and opened fire, fearing for their safety. No gun was found and only the cellphone was found near his body when more officers arrived and approached him about five minutes after the shooting. Sequita Thompson, Clark’s grandmother, said it was common for Clark and other guests to enter their home through the backyard due to their faulty doorbell and the fact that she and her husband have poor mobility. Thompson said that guests generally knock on the back window and ask her to open the garage door to let them in. Thompson said she was in her home when she heard four gunshots outside the window. The only thing that I heard was pow, pow, pow, pow, and I got to the ground. She eventually decided to look out a window and saw her grandson’s body in her backyard. “I started screaming.” Black Lives Matter Sacramento called it a police murder and wants quick answers. By the Washington Post‘s count, there have been 230 fatal shootings by on-duty police officers so far in 2018. This shooting comes less than two years after the killing of Joseph Mann, another unarmed Sacramento man who was shot by police in the summer of 2016. His death led to a number of police reforms, including the requirement that all patrol officers wear body cameras and receive training in de-escalation.
The following video is police body cam footage from the released by the Sacramento Police Department. The video shows Stephon Clark being shot and it may not be suitable for all audiences. I know I had a hard time looking at it.
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