By Aya Mikbel, Christina Mendez, Lucas McMaster, Sonia Pagan and Michael Pepper | Special To The OBSERVER
Dr. Flojaune Cofer says she is running for mayor of Sacramento because she believes she has a “responsibility and duty” to try to fill the gap between constituents’ desires and the actions of the city’s elected officials.
Dr. Cofer is best known for her time as chair of the Measure U Community Advisory Committee, where she advised the mayor on the use of the half cent sales tax expansion meant to help underdeveloped parts of the city. She is also known for her opposition to the use of Measure U funds for core city services rather than for inclusive projects meant to uplift disadvantaged communities.
Dr. Cofer works as a public health advocate and also has been involved in public service as a member of the Active Transportation Commission and the Mayor’s Climate Change Commission.
Dr. Cofer recently was interviewed by a group of Sacramento State journalism students who asked questions on behalf of The OBSERVER about public safety, affordable housing and diversity.
Q. In June, Police Chief Kathy Lester told the City Council that she rejects the notion that there is a systemic problem at Sacramento Police Department. Do you think there is any truth to her claim?
A. Absolutely not. Chief Lester knew that was nonsense the moment it hit the tip of her lips. It’s like the dog that’s in the meme with a fire: ‘Everything is fine.’ No, it’s not. It’s literally on fire. How do you say that?
The data in Sacramento County for Black men show that they make up 5% of the population and they are 40% of the stops. Also 81% of the times when they’re stopped, no citation is offered. You can’t tell me there’s not a racial problem with those numbers. That’s not even efficient – let’s take everything else out of that. That’s not even an efficient way to spend your time.
Don’t tell me you need 100 more officers when you’re stopping people and nothing is happening, when you’re stopping people for window tints and you didn’t even test the window tint? That’s not a pretextual stop. That’s just a lie, right?
And so what I think Chief Lester – giving her some grace here – but what I think she was saying is “I don’t think I work with people who wake up in the morning and say, ‘I hate this group, this group, this group and this group.’”
And that may be the truth, but that’s not how institutional racism works. It works where you have policies and practices that disproportionately impact a community. Your officers pull people over, under suspicion, because of a series of circumstances that are not quite accurate, and that are biased in a particular direction. That’s what it looks like. It’s not about you waking up in the morning and going, “Gosh, I hate these people.” It’s about how your policies and practices allow you to harm a certain set.
Q. You’ve said that Sacramento has spent a lot of money on affordable housing, but that it has not been spent as effectively as it could be. What are some ideas and investments that you believe would put the community in the right direction?
A. The first thing that I’d like to see us do is to be able to establish “safe ground” all around the city. We have parks that are underutilized that already have water hookups, but we need a place for people to be able to go immediately who are experiencing homelessness or experiencing challenges where they can be safe, and where services can be provided.
So I want that to be a place that has shower hookups and bathrooms, and a place for you to be able to store things, an opportunity for people who have pets, who have children, who have cars, whatever it is, to be able to show up and say, “I don’t have anywhere to go right now, and I need a safe place to be, where I’m not going to be subject to law enforcement, or be told that I’m not allowed to be here and shuffled around.”
Then we need to invest some dollars in some long-term leases with some of our hotels and motels. They are already filling in the gaps for us, they’re just doing it in a piecemeal way.
People get a couple hundred dollars, they go and they spend a night or two in the hotel or motel, so they can watch some TV, shower, wash some clothes in the sink, do things, and then they’re back out on the street. And so if the city enacted long-term leases with those hotels and motels, they’re primarily small businesses, they’re primarily minority-owned and women-owned businesses. This would be a great boon for both our economy, as well as the least expensive way to be able to get people into long-term housing.
And then we need to be looking at things like vacancy taxes because we can’t be building market-rate housing and saying we can’t afford to do more affordable units, and then have them sitting empty. I believe housing is a human right, and so therefore we need you to be paying into the system if you’re not offering up those units to house people.
Q. The majority of Sacramento city government employees identify as white, while only about 30% of the overall city’s population falls into that category. Do you think it’s important for our city’s government to look just as diverse as the rest of its residents?
A. Absolutely. When you see patterns, they are by design, not by a mistake. And so what that means is that we have found ways to bake into how we’re hiring, and who we’re promoting, that are falling along the lines of disproportionately disadvantaging certain communities and advantaging others.
There’s a concept called “mistaking the mirror for merit.” When you have people who have already been a part of the city system, and they have a degree or they have a certain background, or they live in certain neighborhoods, and then they see people whose applications come in who look like them, they assume they are more deserving of this job. So I think there are ways that we can take some of the biases that are baked into our processes so we can actually see what is needed for the job, and who is best set up.
If your staff don’t reflect the population, then you’re going to have questions like, “What do we need to do?” But if I go out into the community in Sacramento, that answer is very easily answerable: it’s Spanish, it’s Hmong, it’s Vietnamese, it’s Chinese, it’s Punjabi, it’s Arabic, it’s Russian. But if you hire a bunch of people who don’t come from those communities and then say, “Gosh, what should we do?” Well now, you don’t have anybody who has that expertise.
Q. There has been recent controversy between the city, the district attorney’s office and the homeless union, which includes the DA’s recent threats to file charges against current city officials for not doing enough to keep sidewalks clear. As a mayoral candidate, to what extent do you think elected officials should be held accountable for this?
A. I’m not amused – this is incredibly dysfunctional – but I do feel like I’m living in an episode of “The Wire.”
All these people got each other’s phone numbers. Why are we having this melee in the press? This is everybody doing a little bit of posturing.
The county is derelict in its duties to be able to provide mental health support, and to be able to contribute to housing, period. They have a $7 billion budget. They have a responsibility to provide these services in the city, and they simply are not. And, the city is also not perfect, and so the two need to come together.
One of the challenges is that [District Attorney] Thien Ho represents law enforcement and the business community, and they don’t come to things with a public health approach. So they’re not always thinking about root causes. They’re thinking about, “How do we respond to things?” And they’re saying, “It’s out of control because when I walk down the street, I see people who are unhoused on the streets in places where they don’t belong.” And my answer is, “OK, where are they going to go?”
I asked Eric Guerra, my City Council member, “Eric, we live on the same street” – he lives seven, eight blocks away from me. “If somebody is unhoused in front of my house right now, and is like, ‘I have a tent, a tarp, I have a job, I just need a place to be able to lay my head tonight, and I want to be free from harassment, a place I can go and I know I can stay there all night, where can I go?’” And Eric was like, “Well, I can’t tell you that.”
And I’m like, “Yeah, but we keep arresting people and putting them in the jail, and then dropping them off on I Street without so much as a bus pass, and not doing any more about this.”
This story was produced by Professor Philip Reese’s Sacramento State journalism students.