Fresno Police Department adopts more new reforms. Here’s what the chief says will change
Fresno Police Chief Paco Balderrama announced Friday seven additional police reforms would be put into action from the recommendations made by the Fresno Commission on Police Reform.
The updated policies range from recruitment efforts to updating the citizen complaint process and disbanding several special units.
Earlier this year, Balderrama said another nine recommendations would be implemented. So far this year, he’s completed 16 of the 73 recommendations from the commission.
The commission was convened last year in response to local and national protests over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.
“I did commit to reviewing these recommendations and to implement the ones I felt were going to benefit the community, the ones that were going to benefit the police department, the officers, and the residents of Fresno,” Balderrama said in a news conference at Fresno Police Department headquarters.
Balderrama said he wanted to remind the community that he doesn’t have the power to enact every recommendation. Some will require action from city officials or laws to be changed, he said.
“This is not something I can do on my own,” he said.
The recommendations Balderrama is enacting include the following:
- Recommendation 19: The police department will use a new software starting in 2022 that alerts the Internal Affairs Bureau commander when officers display problematic patterns of behavior. The Fresno Police Department also updated its policy on Racial or Bias-Based profiling after conferring with the Department of Justice.
- Recommendation 21: The police department updated its policy to ensure the public can make clear, concise and robust complaints about officers. Department officials will conduct an audit to ensure complaints are received at the all levels and followed through in a timely manner.
- Recommendation 22: Police staff are working with the Department of Justice to update the department’s policy to ensure victims of discrimination are protected.
- Recommendation 30: The police department is working to diversify its recruitment efforts with special attention on hiring more women. So far in 2020, five women police officer recruits and four women cadets were hired.
- Recommendation 31: The police department is working with Fresno Unified, Fresno City College and Fresno State to attract applicants and create career pathways.
- Recommendation 46: The police department disbanded the following special units: FAX unit; violence intervention and community services unit; homeless task force; graffiti unit; and the recycling task force.
- Recommendation 56: The police department disbanded the homeless task force. Those officers now work with the mayor’s Homeless Assistance Response Team (HART).
Sandra Celedon, who was vice chair of the Commission for Police Reform, said the public deserves more.
“Frankly, (Friday’s) announcement by Chief Balderrama regarding department changes isn’t good enough,” she said.
Recruitment
A 2019 Bee analysis of city data found 75% of the city of Fresno’s workforce was male. In the police department at the time, 76% were male.
Balderrama acknowledged Friday that policing historically has been a male-dominated profession.
“We want to change that culture. We want to change that perception,” he said. “We want any young lady who wants to serve the community as a police officer to look at the Fresno Police Department as a great place to work.”
Recruiting and retaining police officers has been difficult in general, Balderrama said.
Mayor Jerry Dyer, who served as police chief for nearly three decades, this year gave Balderrama a high goal for hiring officers. So far, Balderrama said the goal is being met. The harder part is keeping up with attrition.
In 2021, Balderrama hired 61 officers, but 69 left the force.
Disbanded units
Balderrama said there’s a national trend in which police are responding less and less to homelessness. He noted that being homeless and having mental illness are not crimes. That’s why disbanding the homeless task force was a good idea, he said.
“We know statistically that the homeless population accepts services from a professional in the field rather than an officer at much higher rates,” he said.
Instead, officers from the homeless task force now work with the mayor’s HART team. Balderrama said the officers’ uniforms have been “softened,” so they wear polo shirts instead of the typical police officer uniform. Now, their main duty is to provide security to service providers serving unhoused people.
But Dez Martinez, an advocate who works daily with people living on the street, told The Bee she hasn’t observed any changes.
“I haven’t seen any difference besides the polo shirt,” she said, adding that it’s obvious the officers still wear bulletproof vests underneath.
Martinez said she and the unhoused population have noticed a difference in the way the officers treat people living on the streets depending on which sergeant is in charge. Plus, she said she doesn’t see a need for officers to accompany the HART service providers.
“We have the police department working as security guards for social workers just to go out into the field,” Martinez said. “We have a lot of advocates that go out to these camps without the police. Why are we utilizing the Fresno Police Department and wasting funds so they can babysit social workers? If you’re a social worker and you’re afraid to go out and be social with your community, then maybe you’re in the wrong job.”
For the other units that were disbanded, those officers were returned to patrol, Balderrama said.
Dyer said the graffiti abatement team was instituted during former Mayor Alan Autry’s administration (when Dyer was chief) and functioned efficiently until the recession hit. Late last year, the team was transferred to the city’s public works department.
Now, the graffiti abatement efforts fall under Dyer’s Beautify Fresno program, which grew by 10 people in the current budget, plus the addition of a graffiti abatement team.
“There will be a renewed emphasis in graffiti reporting, abatement, enforcement, and prosecution when needed in 2022,” Dyer said in an email.
Mark Standriff will oversee those efforts and coordinate with the police department, code enforcement and city attorney’s office when needed, Dyer said. There will also be marketing and education campaigns aimed at curbing graffiti.
Other reforms
Balderrama said the city’s police reform implementation team is working on other reforms, such as the possibility of creating a citizens oversight board. He and his staff also have an internal department implementation team.
Balderrama acknowledged not all of the recommendations will be enacted, such as removing school resource officers from campuses, because most Fresno Unified, students and parents expressed they prefer officers on school sites.
Celedon said that’s unacceptable, noting that research provides “overwhelming proof” that additional counselors are more valuable to school safety than officers.
“The public deserves better than this. We can’t have ‘One Healthy Fresno’ with a dysfunctional and dangerous police department,” she said.
This story was originally published December 3, 2021 at 12:26 PM.