Interview: Former Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn on downtown mass shooting

The Sacramento Police Department continues to investigate Sunday's shooting near 10th and K streets. Six people were killed, 12 wounded. 

There has been one arrest, of a 26-year-old man booked for assault with a deadly weapon and convicted person carrying a loaded firearm. He's being called a related suspect but is not being charged with murder, according to Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. 

Retired Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn joined CapRadio’s Mike Hagerty to discuss public frustrations related to the situation and the response overall. 

Interview Highlights

There is some frustration on the part of families of those killed and wounded, the public at large and the media at how little information seems to have been released in the last 36 plus hours. You have overseen major investigations in the city. Can you give us a glimpse as to what may be underway, as well as some guidance as to what is reasonable to expect and when in a situation like this? 

I can completely understand the families' frustration and emotions that they're feeling. My younger brother was murdered in our city, and you know, the things that I went through my mom went through as that investigation progressed.

But the reality is, I'm sure I know the families, our community and the police department all want the people that are responsible for firing so many rounds in a crowded area and killing so many people to be held accountable, and that requires evidence. And it's important when we talk, when the officers talk to witnesses that they are getting that from their own memory and not from the news.

So I'm sure the police department will release more information when they can. But at the early points in the investigation, they keep things really close, not to contaminate any evidence. 

Yesterday, you tweeted that there is a cycle for these sorts of incidents, and police response to them are heavy law enforcement solution, followed by a decrease in crime. And as you put it, the pendulum will swing to the other extreme. What exactly do you mean by that? And are those extremes inevitable? 

Well, what's typical and seen throughout history, and I think will be the pressure for this also, is to find quick solutions and in the grand scheme of things, relatively easy solutions. So what happens is we call for more law enforcement, heavy law enforcement, zero tolerance, all those sorts of things, like, similar to the late '80s, early '90s when crime was skyrocketing. Sacramento averaged 80 and 90 homicides a year. But that also damages relationships, and it's also a single focus, which is never, never the answer. 

So we have a lot of challenges that lead to violent crime — poverty and lack of hope — and all these things that we suffer in some of our communities that all need to be addressed. So the immediate is, you know, solve this crime. Hold people accountable that are responsible for this tragedy. And sure, people feel safe downtown. And that might be an increased law enforcement presence, increased community organization presence. But those things aren't sustainable because you're pulling those resources from another neighborhood. 

What the long-term solution is to work holistically on this. And as we've seen throughout history, heavy law enforcement, heavy arrests, zero tolerance, crime goes down. Then we want to hold people accountable. Not as much law enforcement or no law enforcement at all. Crime goes back up and we keep swinging from one extreme to the other instead of dealing with the real issues that we have, including changes in how we do [the] criminal justice system. Those things need to be addressed, but we tend to live in the extremes.