Sacramento’s black police chief talks race and policing | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn believes that his department and law enforcement agencies across the nation must do more to combat racial bias to quell the spate of fatal encounters between officers and minorities.

In the latest episode of Majority Minority, Sacramento’s first African American police chief discusses how he and the city are grappling with the aftermath of the death of Stephon Clark. The unarmed African American man who was fatally shot by Sacramento police officers who were pursuing an alleged car burglar in the city’s Meadowview section on March 18.

“I would say I have never handled anything like this, I don’t think our city has handled anything quite like this,” Hahn said. “I’d say this is bigger than anything Sacramento has ever seen.”

Officers said they believed that Clark had a gun. He was found only with his cell phone.

Clark’s death, which has triggered protests in Sacramento and elsewhere, is the latest in a string of cases across the country involving police violence against people of color, from the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a white officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 to the beating and choking of a unarmed black man last year in Asheville, N.C., by an officer who stopped him for allegedly jaywalking.

“Race permeates almost everything we do in our country,” said Hahn, 49. “I do believe that implicit bias is something that we have to tackle, for sure as a police department, but [also] as a society.”

Racist and biased behavior is more pronounced in law enforcement than other fields because “we have the most power than any profession in the country,” Hahn said.

“We can take people’s freedom away, we have guns, we have Tasers,” he added. “That’s why it gets concentrated so much on law enforcement because of the immense power that we have.”

But Hahn said the department also has more influence than any other city department.

That influence comes with responsibility to try to change attitudes within law enforcement agencies and within minority communities where distrust of police is high.

Hahn, who’s been Sacramento’s top cop for less than a year, said he began trying to address bias within his police department before the Clark incident. He’s working with academics to develop implicit bias training for his officers and the community to be taught by officers and community members.

In the meantime, he’s dealing with Clark’s killing. Hahn’s department and city officials have had to handle protests following the release of an autopsy that revealed that Clark was shot six times in the back. Hahn released audio and video of Clark’s encounter with police three days after the shooting.

“I don’t know anywhere that’s done it that quickly,” he said. “There was a lot of anger and high emotions in our community, and our community has a right to see those videos.”