Mayor, Council deliver united message in response to protests

A united message from the Sacramento City Council on May 31, 2020:

The Sacramento City Council condemns in the strongest terms the killing of George Floyd. We believe that the officers responsible should be prosecuted and brought to justice.

We  all agree that people have the right and in fact the duty, to protest and to seek and demand change to what is broken in our society.

Today, we saw Sacramentans from all walks of life, mostly young people, coming downtown to help clean up the broken glass and the damage suffered by many of our small businesses. Some who came down this morning were peacefully protesting the day before, and it shows all of us here in Sacramento, and throughout the country, that you can demand change and love our small businesses and our city at the same time.

The destruction that our downtown businesses and our city experienced last night is unacceptable. We will hold those responsible to account. We believe that a good number of the people who perpetrated the violence came from outside Sacramento.

Finally, number five, we pledge to the people of Sacramento that we are doing everything in our power, together with our city manager and police chief, to assure that tonight will be different. The mutual aid relationships we have with our neighboring law enforcement jurisdictions are ready and in place. We have never seen the kind of behavior we saw last night in the city of Sacramento. We do not intend to see a repeat of it tonight.