Fresno police reform commission floats recommendations on mental health, use-of-force
Fresno’s commission on police reform has begun to float recommendations on use-of-force and other policies in its quest to rethink the Police Department.
The commission has been given a 30-day extension on returning with recommendations that will be voted upon by the Fresno City Council. Councilmember Miguel Arias confirmed the extension on Monday.
The commission sub-committee on police tactics and training has come to a consensus that armed officers should not be first to respond to calls related to suicide, mental health or other non-violent behavior, according to Scott Baly, a Fresno-based defense attorney and committee member.
The sub-committee also wants a mission statement in the police officer handbook related to use-of-force. The statement should inform both officers and citizens, Baly said.
“The tone to the manual, as we looked at it as we began, looked like a device to protect the city of Fresno from liability. That’s my view,” Baly said. “Our view is police manuals should be a device to help police officers in the field.”
The handbook should also be something regular citizens can look at to determine the proper actions of officers, he said. “If a police officer is acting out of compliance with their policy, this is not a fact that should be hidden from the public,” he said.
Qualified immunity
The commission members have expressed some interest in changing the status police officers in California hold with qualified immunity.
Under qualified immunity, police and other officials are immune from federal civil lawsuits unless their actions violated clearly established legal precedents at the time.
Committee member and Fresno State professor James Pitts said the committee has just begun to broach the subject and will need to go through a substantial debate on qualified immunity.
“I have a substantial issue with closing ranks and protecting those bad officers,” Pitts said.
California has strong Public Safety Officers Bill of Rights and other privacy policies that can make it difficult to identify officers who commit misconduct.
Members of the police tactics and training sub-committee have already bumped heads over use-of-force language in the handbook. Fresno Police Officers Association union President Todd Fraizer took exception Aug. 7 to the suggestion that officers should intervene before another officer steps over the line.
He argued officers can’t read the future and know that their colleagues are about to go too far. Critics said officers must step in before a fatal use-of-force because waiting until it happens is too late.
Ongoing violence
The commission was born out of the weeks following the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
Police violence against people of color has continued, according to D’Aungillique Jackson, who is a commission member and president of Fresno State’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Member and pastor the Rev. DJ Criner also talked about continued violence, pointing to the shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man who was shot in the back seven times by police in Wisconsin.
Criner said he would like to see Fresno officers go through a routine training and evaluation related to their mental health and biases.
“Even if they’re not involved in a shooting — just an incident or a traffic stop — their previous experience with a certain race, a certain side of town can cause them to have a bias,” Criner said. “(That’s) whether it’s conscious, whether it’s unconscious, whether it’s explicit or implicit. That could lead to a serious incident.”
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 3:32 PM.
