Six Fresno cops have been disciplined so far this year, report shows. What did they do?
Six Fresno officers were disciplined in the first quarter of the year after investigations generated by complaints of officer misconduct, according to a report released Tuesday.
That includes two suspensions and four formal letters of reprimand, according to the quarterly report from the Office of Independent Review.
There were 59 officers and Fresno Police Department employees disciplined in all of 2021 and 84 the year before that.
The report does not name the officers who are disciplined and provides sparse details on the accusations. It is prepared every three months by Independent Reviewer John Gliatta, a former FBI agent who has had the role in Fresno since 2017.
The report also lists a number of claims and findings, but does not say which cases led to disciplinary actions.
All of the cases in the report have been or are pending reviews by Fresno’s Internal Affairs (IA) investigators, and the Office of Independent Review did its own investigation on most of the completed reports.
The independent reviewer agreed with the IA findings in all of the cases in which it reviewed, the report shows.
Discourteous treatment or conduct unbecoming of a police officer
An officer was found to commit conduct unbecoming of a police officer for a March 18, 2021, incident involving domestic violence, the report says.
The officer failed to take action, follow arrest procedure for the felony, follow reporting procedure, “diligently investigate and document” and protect the victim of domestic violence, the report says.
A May 24 incident involving an employee — not an officer — also was sustained, the report says. The department employee in a social media post challenged a city employee to a fight, according to the report.
Another investigation from Aug. 3 was related to a disturbance at a local pub involving three officers, the report says. Investigators said that claim was unfounded.
An officer who stopped a person Aug. 5 was found to be unprofessional and also did not activate their body-worn camera, the report says.
Unreasonable force
An incident from June 23 led the department to claim an unreasonable use of force by two officers, but they were exonerated by both the Internal Affairs and the reviewer.
An officer was also exonerated for an Aug. 20 encounter in which a resident complained of excessive force and that the officer kept the person’s ID, the report shows.
Shootings by officers
There have been four shootings by officers so far this year, and all of those reviews are pending, according to the report. Two of those were fatal.
Two others from last year are also pending, the report says.
This story was originally published April 20, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
