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BipOlar weather first month after Trump’s election. That that he was wholly accepting of. She pace died down in the weeks leading to said that Brownell, an Army veteran who last month’s inauguration, but picked up served in Afghanistan, likely suffered from locally around the time Trump inked his undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. controversial travel ban. The restrictions Brownell’s attorney alleged that the were chaotically enforced at airports around 25-year-old was defending himself and his the country against visa holders, green card friend from the group. holders and vetted refugees who aided U.S. Last February, the judge declared a military forces until a federal judge stopped mistrial after jurors couldn’t determine it with an emergency injunction. whether Brownell attacked the musicians On February 9, the Ninth Circuit as a hate crime. A retrial was avoided after Court of Appeals rejected the Trump Brownell accepted a plea deal, maintaining administration’s attempts to overturn one assault-with-a-deadly-weapon the injunction, setting up charge and dropping the an expected showdown remaining two assault before the U.S. charges, one allegation Supreme Court. of inflicting great Still, hate crimes bodily injury and “I wish that she came were relatively rare the three hate in Sacramento crime allegations. and asked questions, if she before Trump He was released had any misconceptions about entered the politiJune 21, 2016, Islam.” cal scene. from North Kern In 2015, State Prison Imam Ammar Shahin most hate crimes and placed on Islamic Center of Davis recorded by the county probation, Sacramento Police according to the Department involved California Department assaults in and around of Corrections. In July, the city’s businesses and Brownell was ordered to downtown public spaces and pay around $55,000 to Richmond displayed a diverse identity parade of and $7,000 to Lyman in restitution fines. suspects, according to information obtained Classifying hate crimes requires that through a Public Records Act request. investigators make a subjective determinaOf the eight hate crimes the department tion on the suspect’s motive, and police will reported that year to the FBI for the federal initially err on the side of classifying if the agency’s 2015 Uniform Crime Report, five victim alleges it, said Officer Matt McPhail, were classified as being motivated by an a department spokesman. But, as the June anti-homosexual and/or anti-transgender incident shows, those determinations can bias. Suspect IDs varied in the eight crimes, change, if not within the investigation, from young to middle-aged, male and during the prosecution. The toughest call female, Asian, white, Hispanic and black. rests on jurors, he said. All except two crimes resulted in arrests. “We have the benefit of not having to One incident, from June 21, 2015, prove something beyond a reasonable doubt garnered national coverage and shook the when we’re making an arrest,” McPhail downtown music community—an assault said. “Whereas, when you go through the near the Alley Katz sports bar on O and 21st criminal process downstream of that, from streets that allegedly started over skinny the arraignment to actually securing a jeans and involved the members of two conviction, the threshold becomes greater local rock bands. and greater.” The suspect, Timothy Brownell, stabbed Most reported hate crimes were personBlake Abbey, the lead singer of Musical to-person attacks that happened out in the Charis, and two members of Hardcore open, including at a Valero gas station at Slaves, Weston Richmond and Alex the corner of Broadway and Alhambra Lyman, in an altercation that allegedly Boulevard, Miller Park and around Mango’s ensued after Brownell heckled the group, nightclub on K Street, and at all hours of the calling them “faggots” and taunting them day. One incident, classified as child abuse, over the skinny jeans they were wearing, targeted a 15-year-old girl at a residence SN&R previously reported. near Mack Road. Brownell’s mother spoke out in the Some communities may be more likely to aftermath and during court proceedings, suffer—and more empowered to report— claiming that her son was not homophobic, the abuse than others. and that she was in a same-sex relationship
The LGBTQ community has traditionally shown the highest count of bias-related crimes categorized by sexuality in the FBI’s statistics. Members of that group may be more likely to recognize when they’re being targeted because of bias, McPhail said. Another explanation could be that Sacramento’s sizable and active LGBTQ population makes a convenient target, he said. McPhail pointed out the Lavender Heights district, a neighborhood that the gay community openly thrives in. “It’s easy—if you had hate in your heart and wanted to seek these people out—to know where to find them,” McPhail said. McPhail acknowledged underreporting and said that crime data aren’t an ideal source. “We have roughly 20,000 crimes per year, so when you talk about the raw number of crimes, and how many of those have any bias component, it’s a fraction of a fraction of 1 percent,” McPhail said. “You either have to conclude that there really isn’t that much hate going on, or that there’s dramatic underreporting, or that it’s simply not a good way to get a pulse.” Recent vandalism episodes have been more public, and community members have responded with donations and around-theblock business. Imam Ammar Shahin, of the Islamic Center of Davis, managed to find that silver lining. “We consider it minor damage compared to mosques that have been burned and destroyed,” Shahin told SN&R. “To us, this was easy. The worry to us was how are we going to fix it because six doors cost $10,000 or so.” A crowdsourced campaign immediately scuttled that concern, to the tune of a little more than $20,000, a sum that went to replacing the doors and heightened security measures. On Tuesday, Davis police arrested Lauren Kirk-Coehlo, 30, after a young woman was caught on surveillance video committing the vandalism. “I wish that she came and asked questions, if she had any misconceptions about Islam,” Shahin said. “I’m sure what led her was a lack of knowledge.” As it turned from day to dusk inside MoMo’s on February 1, Sharon Miller announced that all the food was sold and thanked the remaining customers who were hoping to eat. Tears gathered at the curves of her eyelids, she hugged the remaining customers, who didn’t gripe about not being served. Next door, the barbershop remained closed. Owner Nick Fink has yet to reopen. Ω
The heavy rains that fattened Lake Oroville and punched a hole through an eroded auxiliary spillway, displacing more than 180,000 Butte County residents due to flooding risks—yeah, that may just be Mother Nature’s opening act. With another storm brewing this week, California is experiencing the type of rainfall that hasn’t been seen since its record drought began in 2011. And according to John Lundgren, Sacramento County’s senior planner, these wild pendulum swings between extreme weather patterns may be the standard going forward. In the second round of an ongoing series of community meetings to develop a countywide climate action plan, local environmental officials convened at the Arden-Dimick Library on February 6, one day before the Oroville Dam spillway that acts as a release valve ruptured into a geyser shooting 100,000 cubic feet of water per second toward the towns below. Flooding and evacuation notices were reported as far as southern Sacramento County, primarily the towns of Point Pleasant, Wilton and Walnut Grove. Jails in Elk Grove and Oroville were also affected by flooding. A workshop in the fall focused on the effects of extreme heat— temperatures in excess of 102 degrees Fahrenheit—during the dry summers. (See “Living with the change,” News, November 24, 2016.) Now, local officials are preparing for the flooding that comes with changing precipitation patterns outlined in a vulnerability assessment prepared by Ascent Environmental Inc. The assessment cited “less-frequent but more extreme storm events” including a higher volume of rain falling within a shorter period of time, as well as more destructive wind patterns. This, according to Lundgren, is likely to be typical. “The storms we’re seeing in this weather pattern is indicative of climate variability,” Lundrgen said. “We expect that variability to get more severe with climate change.” Although a search for “climate change” on the Trump administration’s government website brings up only three noncontextual results (none of which relate to climate change), Lundgren said the state of California, not the federal government, will dictate local climate policy. “Our general plan has mitigation measures that say we need to embark upon this climate action plan,” Lundgren said. “So that’s what we’re doing. Regardless of what the current national political scene is.” Adaptive efforts presented at the workshop include countywide levee improvements to mitigate extreme flooding. According to an official with the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, SAFCA will begin installing seepage cutoff walls within the next two years along six miles of the Sacramento River levee around the Pocket area, and four miles of the river in North Sacramento primarily along Arcade Creek. Additionally, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to buffer local river walls with additional erosion protection, though no date for these efforts has been set. The Corps is already at work on a new auxiliary spillway at Folsom Dam, with financial and engineering support from the state. Along with the spillway, the dam will be raised three and a half feet and improvements will be made to the surrounding dikes. Completion is scheduled for later this year. Revelations emerged this week that environmentalists warned officials to strengthen the Oroville Dam’s spillway more than a decade ago because of concerns about its vulnerability. Lundgren said Sacramento County is serious about its preparations. “We’re taking a very contemplative, thoughtful [approach to] this,” he told SN&R. “We don’t want to just haphazardly apply climate change measures to the community without thinking how that might impact all the sectors of the community.” A third round of public workshops are tentatively slated for spring, though no specific date has yet been chosen. (Matt Kramer) This story was made possible by a grant from Tower Cafe.
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