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Zachary Basler, Vice President of the Sacramento Stonewall Democrats, leads the community training on September 9, 2026.Ruth Finch\/CapRadio<\/p>\nRecent attacks in the Lavender Heights district has led to the formation of a community patrol in the area. Groups of lavender-vest clad volunteers will help people get home safely from the bars and clubs in the area.<\/p>\n
A victim of one attack that happened on August 30, Joseph Sais, said that he won\u2019t let these attacks stop him from going out in Lavender Heights, a historically LGBTQ+ neighborhood in Midtown. He attended the patrol training that was held Wednesday evening at Mango\u2019s Sacramento.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless, I\u2019m not going to stop living my life,\u201d Sais said. \u201cSeeing the amount of people here has made it known that hate like this shouldn\u2019t happen in Lavender Heights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Captain Robert Young with the Sacramento Police Department attended the community patrol training, and he said that the team of officers that patrol Lavender Heights and other entertainment districts are spread thin, with five officers patrolling these districts in Sacramento.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s only so many of us to go around,\u201d Young said. \u201cIf we have a large, for lack of a better term, bar fight that breaks out on Second or Front Street, sometimes those large incidents can pull 10 or 12 officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Community Service Representatives from Sacramento Police Department advised patrollers not to intervene if they see an attack or confrontation, but to call the police if they see a crime taking place.<\/p>\n
Some community members called for more police presence in the area. Neil Galimba, a business owner in Lavender Heights, said that he\u2019s talked to a number of people who have been victimized by hate crimes in the area who don\u2019t report the crimes to police.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve discovered four more victims I didn\u2019t know about, and I told them we have to file a report, otherwise the city doesn\u2019t know these things are happening,\u201d Galimba said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Phil Pluckebaum, the city councilmember who represents the Lavender Heights district, attended the patrol training. He said that he would like to see more officers patrolling the area as well, but the city doesn\u2019t have the funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bad news is we\u2019re, as a city, in a position of making cuts. We just made $66 million worth of cuts in the last budget. We have another at least $35 million to make in the next budget,\u201d Pluckebaum said. \u201cThe likelihood of getting additional funding for any service in the city right now is pretty dire.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Zachary Basler, Vice President of the Sacramento Stonewall Democrats, leads the community training on September 9, 2026.Ruth Finch\/CapRadio<\/p>\n
However, others were made uncomfortable by the police presence at the meeting, and at the prospect of more police presence in the area. The history of LGBTQ+ rights has been fraught with discrimination from police after raids on gay bars, from the infamous Stonewall Riot<\/a> in New York in 1969, to the lesser-known 1966 Compton\u2019s Cafeteria Riot<\/a> in San Francisco, to the 1979 police raid<\/a> on a gay disco in Sacramento that helped inspire Sacramento\u2019s first Gay Pride Parade.<\/p>\n In the community patrol training, Sais called for meetings and other training for the community patrols to be held without police presence, so that more community members who feel uncomfortable with police presence would still be able to volunteer for patrols.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are queer voices that may not be heard, and with us making sure that we bring the communication style back to the community and finding alternative pathways,\u201d Sais said. \u201cWe could find ways to reach individuals that still have systemically been abused by the police system.\u201d<\/p>\n