High crime, public scrutiny challenge Fresno PD recruitment push

The Fresno Police Department must overcome a number of challenges — both internal and external — to recruit more than 100 officers in 18 months to meet city goals.

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer says his department is plagued by an issue faced by some struggling Major League Baseball teams.

“We eliminated our farm system,” Dyer said.

“Our cadet program was our minor league team — we’d mold them in the field before sending them to the academy. Prior to the recession, we had 77 cadets.”

Budget cuts in 2009 due to the Great Recession destroyed the cadet program and also slashed more than 150 officers from the payroll. With the improved economy, the city has more money for police hires. Now, Dyer must rebuild cadet training and attract more officers to a city in the thick of a violent crime wave.

And as a result of highly publicized cases of suspects killed by officers in Baltimore; Ferguson, Missouri; and New York City, police are under more scrutiny than ever.

One veteran Fresno police officer says smartphone videos may not tell the whole story, and can jeopardize careers. But a recruit said he feels up to the challenge of starting a career when anyone with a smartphone can capture his every move.

Dyer will have to compete with other law enforcement and private security agencies for a small but growing crop of new recruits. To attract new officers, he plans to use the cadet program, offer larger signing bonuses to veteran officers and revamp his department’s image.

The numbers

Fresno’s sworn police force as of June 25 was 692 — a drop of more than 150 from 2008. Dyer said 84 officers will retire in the next 18 months.

He expects some officers also will leave for other departments. Around a dozen have left in the last year to seek better pay or benefits at smaller departments, and more departures are expected.

Fresno’s approved 2015-16 budget calls for an increase to 760 cops by June 2016.

Dyer said some potential hires are taking other jobs, in part because Fresno’s slower hiring process depends on rising tax dollars.

“The private sector recovers faster in a recession because we rely on taxes from the previous year to know if we can hire more,” Dyer said.

Fresno must compete with other city departments and county sheriff’s offices for the same pool of recruits. Virtually all of these agencies are also looking to hire more officers in the wake of the recession.

And Fresno’s standards for incoming officers have not changed — even if the world around them has.

“Unfortunately, we live in a society that believes that marijuana and other drugs are OK,” Dyer said. “California decriminalized things like possession with Prop. 47, but we want officers who don’t agree with this idea.”

The next generation

One such model recruit is Anthony Tafoya, 30, who the department signed up months before his June 26 graduation from the Fresno City Police Academy.

Tafoya had a unique road to becoming a Fresno police officer.

He first completed the academy in 2007 but failed his psychological examination because he lacked maturity.

He started filling out applications while continuing his education at Fresno State, but gave up when he didn’t get a response for a year and a half.

Tafoya completed a degree in psychology, which involved studying under the psychiatrist who failed him during his police evaluation. Realizing that law enforcement agencies still wanted him to be more mature, he enlisted in the Navy.

“I always want the biggest challenge in everything I do, so I enrolled in Navy Seal training,” he said. But Tafoya caught pneumonia three weeks into training and had to quit.

Tafoya served out the remainder of his enlistment in Virginia before returning to Fresno last year. Although it had been seven years since he graduated from the academy, he never lost his desire to become an officer.

After learning he had to repeat the academy, he re-enrolled in January. Tafoya was one of 48 recruits to graduate on June 26.

The Fresno City College Police Academy is working to accommodate more recruits than ever before, spokeswoman Cris Monahan Bremer said. More than 100 students are currently enrolled in three academies, and 60 qualified for the next one starting in January.

Bremer said around 140 students are signed up to take the physical and written academy entrance exams.

Even before his graduation, Tafoya noticed an immediate change in the Fresno Police Department’s recruitment practices.

“They told me to apply in the first week of the academy,” he said. “It went really fast this time around. Within two months, I was done with the application process.”

Tafoya said the entire hiring process took about six months, which was much faster than the hiring he observed in 2007.

The department even paid him as a cadet for his last few weeks, even though he wasn’t doing actual work for Fresno police.

This policy, Dyer confirmed, is for those academy students who may not be able to pursue their desired career in law enforcement because they have a family to support. Attending an academy every day for six months may be impossible without some supplementary income; the department pays them around $17 an hour.

As he began his orientation week with the department, Tafoya was excited.

“I am pretty confident in my ability — confident in what I learned at the academy. In my life, I’ve learned that hard work eventually pays off if you always do your best.”

One concern, he added, was the increasingly transparent world of modern policing.

“Right now, there’s a lot of pressure. Body cams are a big deal at the academy. I just think that if officers are doing the right thing, they should have no problems.”

When asked why he chose the busy life of a Fresno police officer over the slower pace in a smaller town, Tafoya responded quickly.

“This is the No. 1 thing: Fresno is my hometown. It’s my community, and they’re my friends and family. It was about taking pride and ownership in that.”

Tafoya’s father, a retired Fresno County Sheriff’s Office lieutenant, told him that Fresno’s department polices “L.A.-type crime.”

“He said that I would get more experience in one year here than in five years at another agency. I always choose the most challenging route.”

The challenges

Dyer said the recession caused an entire generation of young men and women like Tafoya to abandon the profession due to a lack of job prospects. Cutbacks damaged department morale, he added, which caused sworn officers to discourage up-and-comers from joining the ranks.

Modern policing also requires many different skills, Dyer said. Officers must now be good at investigating, community involvement, tactics, using technology and other policing requirements instead of specializing in just one or two.

“I can’t remember a time where there was such a great demand to find officers who are good at everything,” Dyer said. “They’re difficult to find.”

A recent spike in crime also has turned off some applicants and recent hires, Dyer said. After four years of violent crime rates falling in Fresno, such offenses are up 14% so far in 2015.

And some applicants, Dyer said, simply are turned off by the national media focus on cases of police brutality. Although many of these officers eventually are found guilty of a crime, he added, some are fired by city governments or their own departments before investigations are completed.

To combat these challenges, the department has a special bonus.

Bonuses for veteran officers willing to leave other local departments for Fresno were doubled recently from $5,000 to $10,000. Dyer said these bonuses are used sparingly to lure commanding officers away from other departments.

The chief hopes to use Fresno’s crime-ridden reputation as a recruitment tool for officers seeking adventure and excitement. Officers can gain a lot of valuable experience working on any of the department’s active task forces, Dyer said.

“Our department provides a lot of opportunities to work in a variety of different assignments, from SWAT to narcotics, vice, street violence, and so on.”

A changing of the guard

It was this diversity that drew praise from officer Greg Torres, who will retire from the Fresno Police Department in September after nearly 37 years on the force.

Torres began as a 19-year-old cadet and has since spent 13 years on the SWAT team, eight years in narcotics and four years as a robbery detective. He also was part of the first violent crime suppression unit in the late 1990s.

He praised the department’s social growth during his tenure. Policing of issues like domestic violence and drunken driving has improved dramatically, as has the department’s use of technology to keep officers safe, he said.

However, Torres also elaborated on his biggest concern with modern policing: that small, shaky videos can destroy cop careers.

“Surveillance cameras are fine, because I know I am operating within the parameters of the law,” he said. “They may even help me prove my case or settle an allegation against me.

“But as these cellphones came out, a 15-second video of an officer doing his job became an evaluation tool,” he continued. “That’s the very stressful part — people will judge you based on 15 seconds.”

Torres said that it is impossible to learn the full story behind an incident in such short clips. Even something that looks like clear abuse should warrant a much longer review, he added.

“We used to feel protected by cameras, but now public opinion and quick decisions by city government can put you on the hot seat,” he said.

“It’s a dark cloud that wears on you emotionally.”

Torres said policing in Fresno is much more violent than in the past. When he was younger, it was rare to see officer-involved shootings and violence involving police. He credits the growth of street gangs and a lack of respect within those groups for the rise of violent crime over the last few decades.

Criminal organizations used to have an unwritten law about not hurting police officers because it attracted far too much attention, Torres said. Now, cops are fair game.

Torres said these gangs, which also are more heavily armed than ever before, make the job more dangerous than in the past.

The last steps

Dyer is looking to turn every one of his officers into a walking marketing machine, with each officer making a conscious effort to improve community relations.

Dyer hopes to get every officer out into the neighborhoods where they patrol to meet the residents and form more positive connections with people. He believes creating a more positive perception of Fresno police in the communities they serve will inspire others to become cops.

“I just had a meeting with all of my sergeants, and I told them the best way to counter negativity is by marketing better both inside and outside the department,” he said.

The department is putting extra effort into recruiting more African-American officers, Dyer said. As of June 25, 6% of the department was African-American.

Several of these officers go to local churches and other community areas to recruit more African-American young men into the department.

Hiring more women is also a priority, Dyer said, as they account for only about 11% of the department.

The final step will be rebuilding the once-shattered cadet program and increasing recruitment efforts.

Dyer said that the department started hiring new cadets in 2014. They have 51 divided into two tiers: Cadet I and Cadet II.

The first-level cadets drive marked patrol cars and fill out reports on minor, non-emergency crimes like vehicle burglaries. They also assist police dispatchers.

The second level is reserved for cadets who are currently in or just out of the police academy. These men and women assist with higher priority police work such as prisoner transport and processing.

If the advanced cadets choose not to become police officers but still want to work in law enforcement, Dyer said the department will work to staff them full-time in other areas. Similar efforts are made for those recruits who do not make it through the academy.

This story was originally published July 19, 2015 at 5:01 AM with the headline "High crime, public scrutiny challenge Fresno PD recruitment push."