"The Match on Top of the Kindling". Chief Daniel Hahn Talks to A&G.

What this episode is about

Chief Daniel Hahn of Sacramento, California, discusses the complexities of policing, emphasizing the importance of good policing that respects civil liberties while being open about his journey from a troubled youth to becoming the city's first Black police chief. He addresses current debates around police reform and shares insights on how the ongoing discussions can lead to meaningful improvements in law enforcement practices.

Key takeaways

• Good policing demands cultural competence—officers must understand the neighborhoods they serve, not just patrol them.
• Defunding police? It's complex: Who responds to 1,800 daily calls if the force disappears? Chaos? No thanks!
• Mental health emergencies aren't a police issue, but cops often become first responders—a societal failure in action.
• Standardized police practices could unify efforts, but flexibility is key; 'One-size-fits-all' never works in policing.
• Reforms are necessary, but we must ensure they don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater—some policing is vital.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Daniel Hahn (Guest) · 9 min speaking
• Armstrong & Getty (Host) · 4 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Sacramento, Daniel Han, California, Minnesota
2. 3:00 – 6:00: Sacramento, Texas
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Daniel Han, Sacramento
4. 9:00 – 12:00: Sacramento, California
5. 12:00 – 13:12: Daniel Han, Sacramento, California

Notable quotes from ""The Match on Top of the Kindling". Chief Daniel Hahn Talks to A&G."

• Minneapolis not having a Police Department I mean if you just think of the city of Sacramento we have over 1,800 calls come in to our communication center every single day of…

  about Sacramento · at 2:58

• Been reading will heard the congressman from Texas he's a man of color as well he's he's proposed some pretty common-sense police reforms that maybe Congress can take a look at…

  about Texas · at 4:55

• Chokehold in the media because the media is bad at their jobs but what's the policy in Sacramento on that we did up to last weekend and we banned it last weekend oh really how…

  about Daniel Han · at 11:48

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Daniel Han — Person · Main guest · 3 mentions · first at 0:00
  Interview subject discussing policing, reform proposals, accountability, recruiting, and Sacramento PD policies (e.g., banning carotid restraint).

Places & events

• Sacramento — Place · Setting · 9 mentions · first at 0:01
  Primary location discussed as the city where Daniel Han serves as Chief of Police.
• California — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at 0:03
  State where Sacramento is located, mentioned in the context of police reforms and protests.
  Then hearing about that when they get home or seeing it on the news I mean we've had we have protests regularly in Sacramento or the state of California so probably on a daily…
• Minnesota — Place · Referenced location · 1 mention · first at 2:13
  Mentioned in the context of a significant incident affecting police-community relations.
  Departments defunding police departments I mean I guess I'd have to see what they mean because I can't imagine like Minneapolis not having a Police Department I mean if you…
• Texas — Place · Referenced location · 1 mention · first at 4:55
  Mentioned in the context of a congressman proposing police reforms.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 we know Daniel Han a little bit around here is the Chief of Police of Sacramento California he was the first black police chief but one of the things we know about chief Han is that he likes to be thought of as just a good cop and not a black cop among other things Daniel Han joins us now how are you chief I'm good how are you Oh terrific and we're really glad you had a little time today as you know about us around here we are big supporters of the the police and we do our best to understand the incredibly difficult job you have but we're also civil libertarians we cherish our civil liberties and we want to make sure policing is good policing that that recognizes people's rights and we know you're of a similar mind so glad to have you along yes I love good policing too if you don't mind can we start with that and we talked about this last time you're on months and months ago but that seminal moment when you

0:48 were 16 how you first became acutely interested in policing yeah I don't know that I became acutely interested in believe aware of them yeah I definitely became aware of it and for sure well I had gotten to a little disagreement with my mom and the police came and ultimately ended up with me going to being arrested for assault on an officer right right and then you end up being a cop which is pretty interesting um yeah that's a wild twisted story yeah I'd hate to be called to account for the things I did at age 16 though honestly don't we none of us would be probably are you kidding if 16 year old Jill walked into the room right now I would think how soon can he leave but anyway so there's a lot of talk about reforming police departments defunding the police eliminating the police proposals from the very reasonable to the utterly ridiculous what's your point of view about the state of policing whether your

1:50 agency or others what what's this strike you is some really good solid ideas that might emerge from the energy of the moment well I mean I think we have to obviously realize that there's issues with law enforcement community relations because we continue to see incidents and then we consent continue to see the aftermath of incidents but really is is horrible as what happened in Minnesota Minnesota was to me that's really the match that's that stone on top of the kindling and the kindling is the everyday interaction and so those are the things that we work on here in sac PD whether it's implicit bias or relationship building and making sure our officers are able to patrol all of our neighborhoods we have a very diverse City so they need it maybe they didn't grow up in that neighborhood but they need to be able to understand the neighborhood understand the culture and the hopes of that neighborhood for them

2:45 to fully be able to be a police officer there in terms of disbanding police departments defunding police departments I mean I guess I'd have to see what they mean because I can't imagine like Minneapolis not having a Police Department I mean if you just think of the city of Sacramento we have over 1,800 calls come in to our communication center every single day of the year 100 times people are calling for some sort of assistance now those don't all result in a dispatched officer or community service officer or CSI but we we dispatch over 480 calls a day in this city and that's community people calling that doesn't count the number of times an officer does something proactively or follows up on a case or detective goes out to serve a warrant or investigation that's only community members calling us we go to over 12,000 calls that are mental health related a year which is 34 a day so my question would be is if you

3:45 if you eliminate the police department who handles all those and if you defund the police department like in Sacramento we're we're about a hundred officers less now than we were twelve years ago and so I'm not I just don't know who would handle all those calls whether they're shootings or burglaries or who would do that but I do think that the police department does a lot of things that we shouldn't do and that we're not the best equipped to do like for example those 34 mental health calls a day a lot of those don't involve violence or threat of violence and yet nobody has anybody else to call right away knows who to call so they call the police department so an officer responds I think there's we set up structures that where an officer never responds to those same with homeless and there's a lot of other categories where that's the case it's astounding to me we don't have mental health squads of whatever you know

4:37 composition and and and rules it's I mean mental health like physical health is is not chosen in a lot of cases somebody's brain doesn't quite work and the idea that officers who get some training but not much of the frontline for that I just it's a failing as a society but moving along from that I've been reading will heard the congressman from Texas he's a man of color as well he's he's proposed some pretty common-sense police reforms that maybe Congress can take a look at and one of them is that make sure you know come up with best practices and and if local agencies want national funding they have to live up to those best practices generally we're not big fans of central control out of DC around here but I am intrigued by the idea what do you think of that yeah I think that those you know standardization in a lot of places is good in some things with ability to localize it to your specific to me we

5:34 have a lot of different communities with that you know need different things want different things so I think to some extent that's good as long as it's well thought out you know there's a lot of things that happen nationally that you know for example just wouldn't fit Sacramento or vice versa on the East Coast so I think some of that would be very good as long as local jurisdictions have the ability to adjust those specifically to their community right like any regulations they might be well-meaning but if they get to you know complex and difficult to follow they'll end up choking choking you out I understand that hey here's an incendiary question for Sacramento police chief Daniel Han how hard is it to get rid of officers who ought to go bad cops well you know there's officers have a lot of rights but I will tell you when we have the officers that clearly step over the line we we take appropriate action and

6:34 there's been numerous officers terminated over the last several years but it's not a super easy thing but is it harder than it ought to be in your opinion I think probably one of the things that could change in regards to that is I don't know for us I wouldn't say it's harder than it ought to be I mean obviously in their appeals process sometimes the decision goes against what I said so in those I obviously don't agree but I think one of the things that could improve is is transparency especially maybe with termination because like you know the community just that the community thinks that if I report something to the police department they're not going to you know they're investigating their own they're not going to investigate their own they're not going to do it earlier they're not going to do it fairly and I'm here to tell you we do and we do hold officers accountable but the committee typically doesn't know that

7:29 because we're not able to tell them that so I'll follow up on that if I'm Jo Jo cop and and I have a really rotten history as a cop I probably shouldn't be one but it's in Tallahassee or it's in Reno or maybe it's in LA same state you're operating in um how easy is it for you to know that that I've already been drummed out as being a bad cop before I say I'm applying to work for sac PD yeah that is a great question because I get that a lot so the the feeling that a cop can be you know horrible in one department and then just write about the time he's going to get fired or something at that department just switches to another department I guess that's possible I've never seen that I think maybe in real small departments maybe it goes but what we require and what every department I've ever seen requires is that officer signs a one-page paper that basically removes all his privacy rights and so

8:30 then we would go to that department and we'd look at his whole internal affairs file we'd look at his whole personnel file our that's what our background investigators do so there's no way somebody could come here without us knowing about all their history in their previous department because if they don't sign that form we don't we we stop right there is it we don't go any further so that's a great question because we get that a lot because people feel that bad officers float around from department to department and I I guess that's possible if a department didn't care about their history but it's it's not possible if they want to know for them not to know that officers history right well yeah interesting because I know some smaller agencies that struggle with recruitment are a little more raw or a little less discriminating about who they hire but on that topic a chief how's recruiting

9:21 these days well I think you probably we probably talked before it's it's been a challenge over the last several years but in the last probably four or five months we started a new recruiting campaign and doing a lot of different things and it's actually been picking up we'll see where it goes in the next couple months but it's actually been picking up this July will be our largest Academy probably two years so that's that's a good sign interest they'll have a lot of catching up to do from when the economy tanked if several years ago we're still catching up from that I have a couple of friends who were recently retired peace officers who they're the kind of cops that you think God exists I mean really good cops I've seen him work and they're just they're they're terrific and and a couple of them said I'm that's it I'm out things have gotten too weird too ugly the scrutiny is different I mean

10:16 it's not like a legitimate oversight it's like every single second somebody is trying to catch you at something how's that struggle going within the force oh that's definitely legitimate I've never seen it you know I've been an officer for almost 33 years now and I've never seen it like this before death threats showing up at people's houses on calls but I also think it's a it's a product of not making enough progress in a lot of the segments of our community but it does make it really tough not only for the officer but for their families and you know watching their loved one leave the house every day to go to work and then hearing about that when they get home or seeing it on the news I mean we've had we have protests regularly in Sacramento or the state of California so probably on a daily basis there's some sort of protest going on somewhere in our city at the Capitol or something else we've had very volatile protests

11:23 over the last couple years but these last protests over the last couple weeks where they're throwing rocks and bricks and fireballs trying to pull officers into the crowds and even worse around the country and some other cities we've never seen that before and so that's that's challenging for officers but I think it also shows that we need to make some progress because it continues to go on do you guys use the carotid restraint at all they're they're calling it a chokehold in the media because the media is bad at their jobs but um what's the policy in Sacramento on that we did up to last weekend and we banned it last weekend oh really how interesting well I tell you what we need good cops desperately and Daniel Han Sacramento police chief does not dodge questions his his department is transparent as you can hear in the chief we appreciate the time very much let's stay in touch thank you appreciate it

12:14 keep up the good work all right yep ah that's that's a good cop right there um and we've been talking about this throughout the show if you're just tuning in there are some good ideas there are some provocative ideas out there how to improve policing how to reform you know what needs to be reformed and making sure that it's easy enough to get rid of bad cops the rest of it in and I think any thinking feeling Americans should be pretty enthusiastic about that that discussion because it's really really important but the extremists and the nut jobs who are or yelling you know disband the police defund the police and if you're not a hundred percent with us you're a bad person or racist they're all we have to reject that thinking number one it's not going to get us anywhere it's just gonna make everything worse and and number two it crowds out the really good smart ideas so uh as good Chad hope you

13:02 enjoyed that Daniel Hahn of Sacramento California are strong and getting you

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in ""The Match on Top of the Kindling". Chief Daniel Hahn Talks to A&G."?

Daniel Hahn (Guest), Armstrong & Getty (Host).

What is ""The Match on Top of the Kindling". Chief Daniel Hahn Talks to A&G." about?

Chief Daniel Hahn of Sacramento, California, discusses the complexities of policing, emphasizing the importance of good policing that respects civil liberties while being open about his journey from a troubled youth to becoming the city's first Black police chief. He addresses current debates around police reform and shares insights on how the ongoing discussions can lead to meaningful…

What is mentioned in this Armstrong & Getty episode?

5 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Daniel Han, Sacramento, California, Minnesota, Texas. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is ""The Match on Top of the Kindling". Chief Daniel Hahn Talks to A&G."?

The episode runs 13 min; the transcript is about 2,412 words in 15 timestamped sections.

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