Lawsuit accuses Sacramento police of treating protest groups differently

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – In a year marked by global conflict and an impending rerun of the 2020 presidential election, the likelihood of mass demonstrations in California’s capital remains high.

Your right to assemble and express your opinions should be guaranteed by the First Amendment, but a pending lawsuit in federal court raises questions about whether the Sacramento Police Department grants some groups more of those rights than others.

The lawsuit was filed by six protesters who took to the streets in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. The murder was committed by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck until he died.

“We all experienced it as a country,” said youth organizer Odette Zapata. “We saw it live on our phones as we watched a black man being murdered by a police officer.”

Zapata was one of thousands who took to the streets to demonstrate for racial justice.

In the past, she had even participated in peace marches with police officers in Sacramento, but she was unprepared for the chaos and violence that erupted on the city’s streets in 2020.

“I remember running away. I remember hearing the sound of rubber bullets, like they were flying past me,” Zapata said. “I remember lying on the ground that night. They were shooting tear gas at us.”

“It felt like it was as close to a war zone as I could imagine,” said local business owner Meg White, who also joined the protests. “People who are defenseless, have no weapons, and are being shot at with rubber bullets.”

Photographs document bruises on White’s body, which she says were caused by Sacramento police using their city bikes as blunt weapons to beat her.

“It felt so ironic to protest against police brutality and to be confronted with police brutality,” White said.

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White and Zapata are two of half a dozen plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by lawyers with the San Francisco chapter of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

“The police cannot pick and choose which side they favor and use different police tactics in this way,” said Andrew Ntim, one of the lawyers for the protesters who filed the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that Sacramento police cracked down on racial justice protesters in the spring of 2020, but later that year were lenient on demonstrators supporting then-President Donald Trump in the so-called “Stop the Steal” protests.

“The police have been using these violent tactics, firing rubber bullets and pepper spray,” Ntim said. “Basically none of this happened during the Stop the Steal protests.”

It is important to recognize that the two protest movements did not have the same impact on the city.

The George Floyd protests were larger and more disruptive: they led to the closure of streets and provided the basis for large-scale looting and vandalism.

“The people we represent were not looters throwing things,” Ntim said. “The problem here is indiscriminate violence. The violence is being perpetrated against all (racial justice) protesters and not against a few black sheep.”

The federal lawsuit points out that there were also black sheep among Trump supporters later that same year.

Yet they were not punished harshly, according to police bodycam footage obtained by the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

A camera caught the arrest of a black man who was beaten by a crowd of pro-Trump protesters during the “Stop the Steal” demonstrations. His face is covered in blood and officers appear confused about what to do.

“I don’t even know what we’re doing right now in terms of arrests,” an officer can be heard saying in the footage. “He was the one who got beat up there.”

“They actually arrested this bystander and not the Proud Boys and other far-right protesters who actually committed the violence,” Ntim said.

The body camera records the officers debating whether the man’s arrest is justified. They decide to arrest him because there is a knife sticking out of the man’s pocket.

Another body camera clip from the same time period shows a pro-Trump protester being released for the same type of alleged offense. Outside the Capitol, an officer spots a hidden knife under the protester’s shirt and decides to release him with a warning.

“This is a troublemaker,” an officer can be heard saying in the recordings.

“He basically has a hidden dagger with him,” says a second officer.

“This is a crime. We should have arrested him,” says the first officer.

The two officers smile about the encounter and say that if they were asked why no arrests were made, they would answer their superior: “This is not an independent action, brother.”

“We believe this is a clear example of the Sacramento Police Department targeting and suppressing a particular type of speech,” Ntim said.

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The protesters who are suing know that officers have discretion, but they want it to be exercised more evenly.

“And ideally the less violent one,” White said. “I don’t want them to start beating up the Stop the Steal protesters too… but it’s either us or neither of us. Don’t choose one or the other.”

A wealth of evidence, including hours of video footage and reams of documents, led Federal Judge John Mendez to allow the lawsuit against the city of Sacramento to proceed.

Following the judge’s ruling, the city is now in a position to respond to the allegation: Did the Sacramento Police Department act in a targeted manner?

Did the police show leniency towards one movement and violence towards another?

ABC10 contacted Sacramento Police for an interview, but police referred us to City Hall. City officials told ABC10 they could not comment on the pending lawsuit.

“I don’t think they’re making this up,” says attorney Stewart Katz, who specializes in police use of force cases.

He has nothing to do with this litigation but agreed to review it for this article.

“As far as I can tell, they are trying to get a change in their policy with their lawsuit,” Katz said.

He points out that the Sacramento Police Department already has written policies and training materials that say protesters should be treated equally, regardless of who is protesting what.

“If they had actually followed these guidelines, some of these situations could have been avoided,” Katz said.

He argues that it is a mistake to assume that the police want to respond differently to different protests, or are even aware of doing so.

“People in law enforcement in general tend to be more authority-oriented. That’s perhaps not a big surprise considering what their job is,” Katz said.

The protesters behind the lawsuit are currently in settlement talks with the city, but no agreement has yet been reached.

They are pushing for greater external monitoring of police tactics during protests in Sacramento in the future and for a stricter policy to de-escalate street conflicts.

If no agreement is reached, a civil court may ultimately have to decide whether Sacramento’s handling of the various protest movements was so different that the city violated the First Amendment.