What kind of police chief will Paco Balderrama be? Many say Fresno hit the jackpot
As Paco Balderrama becomes Fresno’s new police chief, he will be a lot of things to a lot of people.
Besides Mayor Jerry Dyer, the city manager and the Fresno City Council, Balderrama said he will have many other bosses in his new job.
“In reality, I can’t think of another job that has more bosses, to be honest with you,” he said in a one-on-one Zoom interview with The Bee. “I mean, I’m going to have 530,000 of them as soon as I set foot in Fresno on Jan. 11.”
He was referring to the residents of Fresno — California’s fifth-largest city.
Balderrama will lead more than 800 officers and hundreds more civilian staff at the Fresno Police Department after a year in which the force responded to a record-high number of shootings and the most murders in 25 years — all in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
He’s the city’s first Latino police chief, making him a leader in that sense, too.
On top of all that, Balderrama must learn how to play politics in Fresno, said Brandon Wiemiller, the new president of the Fresno Police Officers’ Association.
“I think that’s true of any police chief, but it’s especially true in the city of Fresno,” Wiemiller said.
Luckily for Fresno, this new police chief has a track record of stepping up to the assignments he receives and excelling, according to his closest family members, friends and colleagues from Oklahoma City.
The consensus: “Fresno hit the jackpot.”
Leading the way
Balderrama, 44, is older than his twin brother, Beto, by 15 minutes. They were born in El Paso, Texas, but spent their early years living with their grandmother in Chihuahua, Mexico, while their mother worked in Los Angeles.
Before they started school, they moved with their mother back to El Paso and lived in the government-housing Sandoval apartments.
Their mother set high expectations for both twins, but she always treated Paco like the older brother, Beto Balderrama said. Paco was taller and heavier than Beto, but the “younger” brother was more outgoing.
“I admit, growing up I talked a lot of noise. And Paco did all the fighting,” Beto said in a phone interview. “What were they going to do to me? They had to go through Paco. He led the way, and I followed. With Paco leading, I knew we were going the right direction.”
Growing up, law-enforcement officers left the brothers with indelible memories. They had a number of relatives in law-enforcement positions such as sheriff’s deputy, state trooper and an El Paso police officer.
“These guys were our heroes,” Beto said.
Paco remembered one Christmas when police officers drove children from families in need, including his, to pick out a pair of shoes and a toy. He picked a Tonka truck and Nike shoes that were red around the rim with a black swoosh. He would wake up at night and look at the shoes, feeling excited.
“Looking back, they were probably used,” Paco said.
Nevertheless, the shoes were a big deal to him.
Another time when the twins were around 10 years old, their mom called the police on them because they were being too rowdy. The police gave the boys a talking to and told them to obey their mother. That left a positive impression, too.
“In my view, the police were always the good guys,” Paco said. “You call them when you need help. You call them when you’re in trouble, and their job is to help you.”
Paco also remembered school resource officers being positive influences.
Before junior high, the Balderramas moved to Oklahoma City, which became their longtime home. They wrestled and played football in high school, taking up odd jobs that paid minimum wage to pay for school clothes and a used car.
Paco spoke fondly of their upbringing, and Beto said their roots gave them an “underdog” edge that pushed them to high achievements.
Why Fresno?
When introducing Balderrama as Fresno’s next police chief during a news conference a month ago, Mayor Dyer showered him with praise.
Dyer noted that the former police chief in Oklahoma City said he tried to groom Balderrama to be the next chief there, and Balderrama excelled in every role in which he was placed. The former Oklahoma City police chief told Dyer he discouraged Balderrama from applying to other departments, with the exception of Fresno.
If he was groomed to be Oklahoma City’s next police chief, why did Balderrama accept the job in Fresno?
There are a few reasons.
First, Oklahoma City’s charter includes a nepotism policy. Balderrama works with not only his twin brother, but also a few first cousins. That would prevent him from ever becoming chief there.
Furthermore, Balderrama never aspired to be a police chief — until the job in Fresno opened.
“My long-term goal was to maybe be a captain down here someday and retire after 35 years. And that was it,” he said. “Up until very recently, leaving the Oklahoma City Police Department — that was not an option. It was not on the table. It wasn’t something that I even considered or could even fathom.”
In the past few years, recruiters started reaching out to him. He saw the Fresno job posting first in 2019, but he’d only been deputy chief for six months and didn’t feel ready to apply. Then when he saw the posting again in 2020, “the little hairs on the back of my head kind of stood up.”
He sent the job posting to his wife and then deleted the email. To his surprise, his wife encouraged him to apply.
Adding to Fresno’s appeal was that Balderrama already had connections here.
When he attended the FBI Academy in 2017, Balderrama’s roommate was Hanford police Capt. Karl Anderson. They became close friends and remain so today.
“He’s somebody that I trust. So he was the first person that I called,” Balderrama said.
Anderson said he thought Balderrama would be an “amazing” fit for the Fresno Police Department, in part because his life experiences are similar to many San Joaquin Valley residents.
Being a bilingual Latino who grew up in government housing and whose first language is Spanish is something many residents here experience, Anderson said.
“He really cares about doing a good job in law enforcement,” Anderson said. “You can feel the care and compassion he has for being a law-enforcement professional.”
Back in Oklahoma City, Balderrama will be missed both in the police department and community.
His close friend and colleague, Oklahoma City police Capt. Jermaine Johnson, said he was surprised and upset that Balderrama took the job in Fresno.
Balderrama can’t go to Walmart like the average person in Oklahoma City, Johnson said. He remembered that while on a trip to Mexico together, a lady yelled out Balderrama’s name at the border checkpoint in Texas.
“He’s so popular in this town,” Johnson said. “To lose him, especially in what’s going on in today’s time — everybody’s replaceable, but some people will be missed. He will 100% be missed.
“You guys are getting someone that seems too good to be true,” Johnson said.
Beto joked that very few people know Paco has a brother, but everyone knows Beto has a brother.
“I don’t mind that. I hate the spotlight,” Beto said. “Now it’s time for me to pick up the torch and continue on here in Oklahoma City. A lot of people are sad about this. They know the loss of Paco.”
Policing philosophies: Advance Peace, police shootings, community trust
In Oklahoma City, Balderrama gained experience in essentially all aspects of policing: patrol; field training officer; tactical team; public information officer and more.
“Every position he got, he was asked to go there and turned it into gold,” Beto said.
Johnson said Balderrama defies the stereotype of cops being abrasive or braggadocios.
“He is everything you want in a police officer because he has the ability to show empathy when it’s needed,” Johnson said. “At the same time, he is a lawman, through and through.”
Paco said the most important part of his job is building trust with the community.
In Oklahoma City, “Paco was engaging with the community when it really wasn’t popular,” Beto said. “It wasn’t the cool job.”
The way to do that is by building trust inside the department and improving officers’ communication with community members, Paco said. Accountability is also a big factor.
There already are many examples of police accountability within Fresno PD, Balderrama said, pointing to an instance when former Chief Andy Hall fired an officer who was arrested on child porn allegations.
Balderrama also said he’s open to a police citizens oversight commission.
“We have to be accountable to not just the police department and our policies and procedures, but we also have to be accountable to the community,” he said.
“What do we all want? We want a safe community, right? We want a police department that is doing a good job and is following the law and is policing. I want the same thing,” he said. “So if we can find a group that we have common goals, and we can get together and they can assist the police department in a self-assessment, evaluation, and accountability, I’m open to that.”
Balderrama is open to working with the community through nonprofits and businesses, as well. Specifically, he said he looks forward to supporting Advance Peace, the program that uses community members to mentor the city’s violent offenders to prevent shootings.
The program was criticized for using public money to potentially pay gang members, and it was vetoed by former Mayor Lee Brand. But it finally received funding through the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission.
Balderrama said the issue of public funding shouldn’t have been a reason to kill the program. Like Dyer, he suggested finding funding for the program through local nonprofits and business donations.
“As far as programs — as a police administrator, they either work or they don’t,” he said. “So if it works, we’re going to do it more and we’re going to support it some more. If it if it doesn’t work, if it’s a flop, then we’re going to look at something else.”
When Balderrama was announced as the new chief, community members took a close look at the Oklahoma City Police Department to learn more about the kind of chief coming here. What they found, and posted about on the Internet, was a website called Mapping Police Violence that ranked Oklahoma City second highest in the nation per capita for police shootings. Fresno ranked No. 25.
Balderrama said Oklahoma City police knew about the website, took it seriously and evaluated the data. They found the organization misclassified several shootings, he said.
The goal is for every department to have no police shootings, he said. The best way to get there is by providing officers additional tools and training so they can walk away rather than fire their service weapon.
Another way to reduce police shootings is by working on the culture of the department, he said.
“Sanctity of life is one thing that comes to mind,” he said. “In every situation, a police officer should have that in mind: the sanctity of life. Everybody’s life is important. Everybody’s life is sacred, and I have to do whatever I have to do to make sure that everybody walks away OK. Or even if it’s in handcuffs, but alive and well and not injured.”
He acknowledged that won’t be accomplished every time, and sometimes officers are put in tough positions. But that should be the goal, he said.
Inheriting Fresno PD
Oklahoma City is slightly bigger than Fresno, but the police department here is much smaller.
“He’s going to be asked to do a lot more with a lot less,” said Wiemiller, the FPOA president.
The new chief is inheriting a department that has a recruitment and retention crisis, Weilmiller said.
More than 50 budgeted positions are vacant, and if the current attrition trend continues, the department will be down an additional 50 people by the end of the year, he said.
“This city has seen what an understaffed police department results in,” he said about the crime rates of 2020. “If we wait until we get to a critical point and then decide to make the safety of this city a priority, it’s going to be far too late. It’s like the Titanic looking ahead at the iceberg. If we wait until it’s right in front of us, there’s no turning back time.”
The department has fewer applicants who are less qualified, too, Wiemiller said. In a salary study from a few years back that compared Fresno PD to other similar departments, Fresno came in last. New recruits choose to work at smaller departments in the area with a smaller workload, he said.
The current force is burned out from working mandatory overtime.
“There’s a growing sentiment of defiance among our culture that our overworked officers experience everyday,” Wiemiller said.
He also pointed out that Fresno’s most vulnerable neighborhoods are the ones that were victimized the most in 2020. The record-high violence taxes everyone in the department, too, he said.
While Wiemiller argued the department needs to hire more officers and pay them better, he also acknowledged that Balderrama might find that challenging with the current elected leaders.
Just last summer, hundreds of residents called in to Fresno City Council meetings publicly demanding to “defund the police.” The department uses the most money from the city’s general fund, and residents asked the city council to direct police money to other social services in hopes of addressing the root causes of crime and preventing it.
When city officials announced Balderrama as the new chief, he addressed that, saying officers are asked to do too much. He specifically discussed police interactions with the homeless population, saying responding to encampments shouldn’t be an officer’s role.
He also discussed race and policing.
“If there’s been anything good about 2020, it’s been the conversations that have been started — the conversations about race, the conversations about equality, the conversations about how we police,” Balderrama said. “They’re conversations that maybe we tap-danced around before, but now they’re here.”
Balderrama already has met more than 100 officers. He said he looks forward to meeting every single one, plus their families.
As Balderrama moved up the ranks in the Oklahoma City, he worked to be level with the officers below him, Johnson said.
“He understands the higher you go up, the more you have to be more open to people and go out of your way to be one of the guys,” he said. “Once you become a major, people avoid you a little. He’s had to go out of his way to say, ‘Hey, I’m still just Paco.’”
Anderson, the Hanford police captain, said Balderrama must learn to navigate the politics of both California and Fresno.
“The dynamics of our state politics and laws are completely different than Oklahoma,” Anderson said.
Wiemiller seemed to agree that politics, especially locally, will present the biggest learning curve.
“He’s going to walk into a department that is excited for new leadership. He’s going to have a lot of support within the department,” Wiemiller said. “The challenge will be to partner with elected officials to make public safety a priority again.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 9:49 AM.