157 - Timothy Spikestrip McVeigh (5.11.2021)

It's been quite a week for the region's law enforcement, with one Sacramento police officer facing two counts of filing a fake police report and another looking at domestic violence charges. (The latter was involved in a December 2019 police shooting of a man's dog outside the Midtown Safeway, for which the city had to pay $99,000.) Is this an aberrant streak of cop misconduct in the region, or is Sac PD leadership finally responding to public pressure?

On the county level, meanwhile, we're seeing the creation of a new oversight commission to keep tabs on the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. Whether it will have any teeth is yet to be determined.
 
It's also budget time in the region, so we're having serious discussions over how much money should be going to our violent, erratic and inefficient police force. Sacramento City Councilmember Katie Valenzuela is pushing back against the proposed budget, asking for a drop in $30.5 million to the cops (to our 2019-20 funding levels), and an investment in things that actually serve the people of Sacramento.

 
Finally, a man in federal court pleaded not guilty to an 'eco-terrorism' case some two decades old. Federal prosecutors want to paint Joseph Dibee as a ghastly terrorist, but the real story is much more nuanced. We'll keep an eye on this case as it moves forward.
 

Thanks for listening, defund the police and, as always:

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