Six Fresno police officers fired, many more disciplined, report shows
Six officers were fired last year from the Fresno Police Department as part of 58 disciplinary actions, according to a report released Monday.
Along with the terminations, five cops resigned in lieu of other discipline, two retired, 28 were suspended, 12 got letters of reprimand, four signed “last chance agreements” and one was fined, according to the quarterly report from the city’s Office of Independent Review released Monday.
Three of those terminations happened in the final three months of 2022. The report provides sparse details about each case and does not say which actions led to each specific discipline.
Shootings by an officer
The Independent Reviewer, John Gliatta, completed two reviews of incidents in which officers fired their weapons. Neither was fatal, and the report says both were within policy.
In the Oct. 12 case, an officer shot an aggressive dog while checking on a potentially suicidal person. The dog was shot once and survived, the review says.
In the other review, two officers fired at a man on March 6 whom police said acted aggressively and fired at officers outside of his apartment near Fresno High.
The man was ultimately arrested and had what police described as a grazing wound to the head that was not life threatening.
Discourteous treatment or conduct unbecoming of a police officer
Nine officers were found to have violated department policy for being discourteous or acting improperly.
An officer was found to have sexually harassed one or more officers on the job related to a investigation that dated back to July 2021, the report says.
Multiple disciplinary actions were taken in separate cases related to officers’ bad behavior while off duty.
One officer was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, an October 2021 investigation found. Another was related to the officer’s bad behavior at a soccer game from July.
An officer did not put a seatbelt on a person they were transporting, a June investigation found. The person was then injured in a crash.
Administrative or performance matters
An officer left their off-duty gun in a public restroom, according to a July investigation.
A May investigation found one officer lost the property of a person they arrested, and that same month another officer did not do mandatory domestic violence training.
This story was originally published January 23, 2023 at 11:40 AM.
