SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Federal authorities said Tuesday they will launch their own investigation into two police officers who shot and killed a 22-year-old unarmed black man in Sacramento last year.
U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott and Sean Ragan, who heads the FBI's Sacramento office, said the probe will determine whether the slaying of 22-year-old Stephon Clark violated his federal civil rights.
"That examination will involve a review of the substance and results of the state and local investigations, and any additional investigative steps, if warranted," said Scott in a statement, adding that the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice will also be involved.
The announcement came after California's top prosecutor, as expected, declined to file charges Tuesday against the two Sacramento police officers who shot Clark to death, and after a night of tense protests and arrests in Sacramento.
At a Sacramento news conference, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released an independent review of the March 2018 shooting, finding that the officers acted lawfully when they fired 20 shots at Clark after he fled into his grandmother's backyard, holding a cell phone.
Clark was struck at least seven times and died on the scene, according to an investigation.
Becerra expressed sympathy for the Clark family, and said he met Tuesday with Sequita Clark, the mother of Stephon Clark. But after reviewing the facts of the case, he said, he determined that no charges were warranted.
"We must all be willing to write the next chapters of this story we call American justice," said Becerra, who added that he had the cooperation of the Sacramento Police Department in conducting his review. "We did it by the book and it will be open and transparent for you to read."
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert released the findings of her office's investigation Saturday. That investigation found that Clark had broken the windows of three vehicles parked on the street in front of his grandmother's home, then jumped a fence and smashed a neighbor's sliding glass door using a cinderblock. Clark did not attempt to steal anything or enter the home.
A neighbor called 911 to report the vandalism, and a Sacramento County Sheriff's Department helicopter spotted Clark and directed two officers on the ground, Terrance Mercadal and Jared Robinet, to Clark's location.
Mercadal and Robinet chased Clark down the side of his grandmother's house. As they rounded the back corner, the officers said in statements that they saw a flash of light in Clark's hand and that he was advancing toward them. Believing Clark had a gun, each officer fired 10 shots.
Becerra said the scene was fast-moving: Officers were informed Clark had broken a sliding glass door of a neighbor's house, and when they encountered him, he failed to obey commands. He then was coming toward officers when they fired, Becerra said.
Both officers said Clark was in a shooting stance and they saw a bright light in his hand. "You could see it develop and it was all very rapid," Becerra said. "These kind of tragedies, they're tough."
Since Schubert's announcement at the start of the week, protesters have held small but strategic demonstrations. Many were angered about her decision to release texts between Clark and the mother of his two children, Salena Manni, detailing a fight and suggesting that Clark may have been considering suicide.
About a dozen students shut down the city's largest shopping mall in a protest on Sunday. The next day, about 100 protesters took to the streets in one of Sacramento's wealthiest neighborhoods, where Ronald Reagan lived when he was governor and where scenes from the film "Lady Bird" were shot.
Eighty-four people were arrested as that protest concluded, including two journalists and a handful of prominent local pastors. The arrests have added to tensions in Sacramento, where only five people were arrested during the large protests last year in the wake of the killing.
Pastor Les Simmons, one of those arrested, said the mass arrests and attorney general's findings "could implode in our community."
Becerra said Tuesday his office did not review the Sacramento district attorney's handling of the case, only the facts that were brought to light in the police investigation. He said his review came at the request of the Sacramento Police Department, which hoped than an independent assessment would allay community concerns about the impartiality of the investigation.
"We weighed a lot of the subjective evidence," Becerra said in coming to the same conclusion as the D.A.
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