How do Fresno police shootings compare to other agencies?

Published online on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

Fresno police officers have fatally shot two people this week and six so far this year, a tally that puts the department ahead of similar-sized California agencies in 2009.

But over the long term, state figures show, the Fresno department has killed suspects at a rate about average for comparable police agencies in the state.

The deaths of Steven Anthony Vargas on Tuesday and John Cooper on Wednesday place the department in an uncomfortable position just as the city is preparing to hire its first independent police auditor.

An announcement on the auditor’s hiring is expected early next week, city officials say. Among that person’s main tasks will be to monitor and review police investigations of incidents such as the two shootings.

Fatal shootings so far in 2009 exceed the city’s totals for any of the previous five years, according to statistics kept by the state Department of Justice Criminal Justice Statistics Center. But from 2004 through 2008, the Fresno department’s rate of justifiable homicide — a killing in which the officer has been cleared of wrongdoing — has been about average for a city of its size.

Over that period, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department had the highest number of such deaths among California local law enforcement agencies, with a total of 24. On average, that comes to nearly one death each year per 100,000 population in the department’s jurisdiction.

At the other extreme, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department had only five such deaths in the five-year period.

Fresno lies about midway on the list of 14 California jurisdictions that serve populations between 250,000 and 750,000. The department reported 12 justifiable homicides by its officers between 2004 and 2008, an annual rate averaging about one-half person per 100,000.

The data compiled by the state are self-reported by the local law enforcement agencies and are subject to revision.