Police make 60 arrests related to Fresno gangs. Critics say there’s a better solution
Fresno police made more than 60 arrests during the weekend in reaction to recent gun violence in the city, Chief Paco Balderrama said Tuesday.
But, critics say racking up arrests every few months does little to improve safety in the city.
Balderrama said the arrests included 25 accusations of felonies and 36 related to misdemeanors.
Officers collected 14 guns, including three privately manufactured guns, during the increased effort through Sunday, he said. About 20% to 25% of the guns taken this year were privately manufactured, or more commonly called ghost guns, he said.
That brings the total number of confiscated guns for the year past 1,000.
“I’ve been asked before, ‘Well, what good does that do?’” Balderrama said. “Those firearms that are recovered, obviously, they can’t be used to shoot anyone else in our community.”
The effort during the weekend used intelligence, high-visibility patrols, more than 125 officers and other efforts, he said.
Balderrama stressed that the number of homicides and shootings this year in Fresno are down from 2021, which was a particularly violent year, but that gun violence spiked in the last three weeks of July.
Officers also wrote 97 tickets and accused seven people of DUI during the weekend effort, according to statistics from police.
The increased efforts are set to continue this week with no specific end date in sight, Balderrama said.
“We have more proactive police and investigative operations planned in the future,” he said.
Do these gang arrests make Fresno safer?
Fresno’s law enforcement goes through a cycle of arrests every year, but those efforts don’t address the root cause of the problem, according to Marcel Woodruff, the lead organizer for Faith in the Valley in Fresno.
Showing off the numbers is performative, he said.
“I think it’s about them, in a way, showing the communities not affected by the violence that Fresno Police Department has this contained and detained,” he said.
The people often labeled as gang members by police are portrayed as sophisticated criminals who don’t deserve any compassion, he said.
“In reality, the gang members I work with and that I know, are the ones that social systems have failed,” he said.
The root causes would be better addresses by prevention and intervention, he said, than with the “hammer” of the police force.
Woodruff was also the technical adviser for Advance Peace, a violence prevention program that works with those who have been deemed likely to cause violence.
The program has been met with resistance, but is in the process to potentially be funded by the city. Balderrama has said he does not want to work with Advance Peace after one of its members was arrested in a prior gang sweep this year.
Balderrama on Tuesday said police can confirm about 40% of the shootings in town are gang-related. He said police can’t arrest their way into prevention.
“Violence interruption is a national topic,” he said. “It shouldn’t be just the police department’s job to reduce violent crime. It should be the entire community’s.”
This story was originally published July 26, 2022 at 1:39 PM.
