Sacramento police department finds former officer neglected his duty. Here’s why

A Sacramento police officer was found in an internal investigation to be credibly accused of allegations that he acted improperly while pulling over a Black woman.

Although the internal investigation has been completed since September 2021, the department did not post the documents and videos to its transparency web page until after The Sacramento Bee filed a California Public Records Act request.

Officer Owen Anstess in July 2021 pulled over a woman on the freeway alleging she was going 90 miles an hour. As he walked up to her car, he pulled his gun out of the holster, holding it behind his thigh, the newly released police dash camera footage shows.

It is not standard procedure for officers to draw their firearms during routine traffic stops, a Sacramento police spokesperson said in an email.

“However, our department policy allows for officers to draw their firearm when the officer reasonably believes it necessary for the safety of the officer or another,” the email states.

The interaction escalated, according to documents from the Sacramento Police Department’s internal investigation, and resulted in the department finding merit to allegations against Anstess of improper search and seizure, neglect of duty, discourtesy, traffic violations and unbecoming conduct. He was no longer with the department when the internal investigation concluded.

Since the Anstess incident, Sacramento police have sustained an allegation against at least one officer under SB 1421, a 2018 law which requires police departments to release findings from internal investigations into certain types of misconduct. Officer Joel McVey performed an improper search and seizure of a Black man on Feb. 10, 2022. The documents and video are not yet posted to the transparency web page. McVey is still a Sacramento officer.

What happened during the traffic stop

The interaction began as Anstess approached the woman’s car after she pulled off the freeway and into a South Sacramento Auto Zone.

“Why do you have a gun out?,” the woman, whose name the department redacted, asked in a shaky voice. “Now I’m fearing for my life. Can you call backup?”

“I walk up to most traffic stops like this when people are driving like that,” Anstess, who is white, said in a raised his voice. “Listen up lady, OK? You don’t run this show, we do. OK?”

The woman repeatedly asked Anstess to call his supervisor, and Anstess refused, which the internal investigation report describes as a neglect of duty.

“Anstess failed to request or even advise his sergeant following the driver’s multiple requests for a supervisor at the scene,” stated an email from Capt. Adam Green to Sgt. Cory Faria of police internal affairs on Aug. 4, 2021, obtained by The Bee’s records request.

Anstess did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

“Anstess was rude, unprofessional and impatient during his contact with the driver,” the email states.

Anstess also broke the law by driving at 81 mph on the freeway to catch up with the car without activating lights or siren, the letter states.

Despite that, he told the woman he had activated it.

“After I turned on my siren multiple times you were still accelerating away,” he yelled at her through her open window, while holding his gun at his side.

“I never heard your siren,” the woman responded.

Anstess also asked the woman when was the last time she smoked weed and if she had anything to drink. It was about 5:30 a.m. She said she had not had anything, and was coming back from dropping a friend at the airport

“I feel like you’ve discriminated against me from jump street,” the woman said in the video. “If you don’t like Black people just say that.”

Anstess replied: “That’s where you’re talking about. Got it. OK.”

He then walked away.

When the woman called the department to submit a complaint later that week, she again raised concern about discrimination.

Faria did not sustain the discrimination allegation because Anstess was no longer a city employee and could not be interviewed, his email stated.

The Sacramento City Council will be discussing police racial bias at its meeting Aug. 8, Mayor Darrell Steinberg has said. The city’s Office of Public Safety Accountability released an audit in June that revealed a “systemic problem” of officers engaging in a pattern of unreasonable stops, searches, and seizures violating community members’ Fourth Amendment rights, specifically Black and Latino residents.

The woman did not have a valid license with her at the time of the traffic stop, and so he had the car towed. Anstess didn’t let her remove items from the car before he took inventory of the items in it, another violation, the letter stated.

What happened to the officer

When Anstess was a Sacramento police employee, he was a community resource officer with a salary of about $57,000.

It’s unclear if Anstess quit or was fired from the Sacramento Police Department. The city declined to say.

By the time internal affairs sustained the allegations in September 2021, he was no longer an employee. In February 2022 he was hired by the Folsom Police Department, where he stayed for about a year.

Folsom Police Commander Andrew Bates said the department was aware of the sustained allegation, but hired Anstess anyway.

“Although ‘improper search and seizure’ is listed in that case document (available on the SPD website) the details of that allegation are that he did not allow the driver of a towed vehicle to get personal items from the car before it was towed,” Bates said in an email. “Calling that an ‘illegal search and seizure’ without explanation is misleading. That case also sustains findings of discourtesy and related allegations. We make hiring decisions based on a complete background investigation, and take into account the circumstances surrounding an event, as well as anything that had occurred since an allegation.”