California Nation podcast: Did Sacramento police need to kill Darell Richards?
The Sacramento Bee is officially relaunching the California Nation podcast. California Nation started in 2018 as “your go-to source for the latest political news from the world’s fifth-largest economy,” with a focus on California issues with national ramifications.
The new version will stay true to those intentions, but it will be produced by The Bee’s Opinion writers and editors. Our aim is to provide you with a window into the conversations that help shape the editorials and columns in The Bee. We’ll take on critical issues, capture influential voices and give readers a peek behind the scenes at how our opinions get formed.
In this week’s episode, Sacramento Bee Editor Lauren Gustus and I examine the case of Darell Richards. He was a 19-year-old Black man shot to death by Sacramento Police Department officers in a Curtis Park backyard in September 2018. At the time, it sounded like an open-and-shut case to many. Police said Richards had pointed a gun at them, though it later turned out to be a pellet gun. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert found the officers’ actions justified.
Listen to this week’s episode here:
But Tim Foster, in whose backyard Richards died, questions whether the story adds up. He says police told him an inconsistent story about what had happened. For example, they said they’d recovered a suicide note in Richards’ backpack, but it later turned out to be a homework assignment. With protests against police violence sweeping the nation in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Foster is coming forward to tell his story.
Lauren and I talked to Foster and to John Burris, the attorney representing Richards’ family in a lawsuit, about the unanswered questions in the case. They say police should have used non-lethal approaches to apprehend a young man who was having mental health issues.
We also consider whether a new bill by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, might have helped. The bill, Assembly Bill 1506, would allow local officials to request that the California Department of Justice conduct independent investigations of officer-involved killings.
You can hear the new episode by clicking on the audio player above or my clicking here. On Friday, we also will publish an editorial based on our conversations with Foster, Burris and McCarty.
Read more on the Darell Richards case:
Officer can be heard yelling ‘gun, gun’ before suspect is tazed in tense video of pursuit
Sacramento police release dozens more videos from Darell Richards shooting
Sacramento police video shows man had gun, but footage doesn’t show where he pointed it
Earlier this month, we soft-launched California Nation with an episode focused on whether the state’s hasty reopening would cause an uptick in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations (it has).
Listen to that episode here:
I will serve as the main host and editor of California Nation. In this role, I’ll use my journalism skills as well as my decades of experience in politics as an adviser to elected officials like Gov. Jerry Brown, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former California Attorney General Kamala Harris. We’ll ask tough questions that cut through PR and spin in order to get to deeper issues underlying the political questions of the day.
Joining me in many of the episodes will be Lauren Gustus, executive editor and president of The Sacramento Bee, who is also a member of The Bee Editorial Board. Together, we will conduct interviews, probe complicated issues and give listeners a window into the thinking processes that go into deciding the positions of the Editorial Board. Bee Columnist Marcos Breton and cartoonist Jack Ohman, also members of the Editorial Board, may also join in as well.
New episodes will publish every other week, or as needed when interesting topics arise.
Please listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play and Google Podcasts.
Listen to the full California Nation podcast series here:
This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "California Nation podcast: Did Sacramento police need to kill Darell Richards?."