‘We would not have had a lost generation.’ Fresno group issues its own report on policing
Raul Rangel. Joseph Pulido. Freddy Centeno. David Zapata. Isiah Murrietta.
The paint-brushed faces of the men sat together as dusk fell Monday on the steps of the federal courthouse in downtown Fresno. Lit by stringed lights, they were front and center during the announcement of a new community-driven report highlighting the need to bring deaths by police in Fresno to a halt.
Organizers with The People’s Commission on Monday released the report, which gathered input from families directly impacted by police killings. The report brings forth recommendations on ways the city can prevent shooting deaths by police and questions the funding that police departments have gotten over the years.
The timing of the report coincides with a similar one crafted by a group of community leaders in Fresno that is now in the hands of the Fresno City Council. The reports were spurred by a summer of organizing around police shooting awareness nationally and helped create a push to reform policing amid local cases of police-involved deaths.
But organizers say one thing distinguishes the two reports: community input.
“Here, The People’s Commission listened to the voices, and then we drafted the report. We didn’t do it without the voices of the people. That’s a big difference,” Gloria Hernandez, an organizer of the event, said with a microphone in hand.
The future of the People’s Commission report is unclear, but it will be mailed to the city council, Hernandez said, in hopes that it informs the decision-making of the council going forward.
“We’re hoping they take it as seriously as they did the police commission report,” Hernandez said.
Some recommendations in the People’s Commission report appear similar to some in the city-crafted report. But among the community-driven recommendations are what the affected families believe are ways that police shooting deaths could be prevented in the first place. The recommendations include shifting budget resources toward community investments and overhauling policing practices.
Jennifer Rojas, a program coordinator with Fresno Barrios Unidos who presented the report’s recommendations, said the report was one more step toward continuing to put residents at the forefront where decisions about their community are being made. She listed demands from the report, including auditing the Fresno police budget, ending spending on military-style weapons, investing in jobs and youth centers, as well as requiring ongoing psychological evaluations of police after an officer-involved killing.
“When the community is properly funded, from a place of abundance, every other problem will fall in line after that,” Rojas said as she read aloud from the report.
One mother, Matilda Rangel, whose 18-year-old son Raul Rangel died in 1985 during a suicidal police confrontation, said during the gathering that she has spent years waiting for action to address police shootings in communities. But with a summer filled with protests and increased scrutiny on police activity, Rangel thinks change may be coming rapidly, although implementing the reports may take some time.
“I hope that they (the city council) don’t let this important work that the commission did to sit on their desks until they feel like they want to go forward with it,” Rangel said.
Organizers like Hernandez, who have long been advocates of police-shooting victims, said they hope their faith in Mayor-elect Jerry Dyer, the former police chief, doesn’t fade. Dyer has recently spoken about his increased awareness and plans to reform policing in the city.
But Hernandez said the demands have always been there, going back decades even when Dyer was in charge. With two reports now available, and a wider lens on police, she and others hope there is finally visible change.
“We would not have had youth that are now adults in prison. We would not have had youth being shot in the back. We would not have had a lost generation that were criminalized because of this war on gangs, war on youth, war on drugs (and) war on community,” Hernandez said with cheers and claps behind her. “This is what the people’s voices are saying.”
The gathering ended in a prayer.
