Karla Kirk said she’s been pushing for years for the Fresno City College police academy to include more cultural studies in its training.

The African American studies professor and academic senate president said she’s reached out before to offer her leadership.

“I’ve had students graduate from the police academy, and then come back for an associates degree and take my class and tell me that they wish they would have had more in the police academy.”

She said there had been talks, but nothing has come of it.

But after weeks of protests and unrest in the country over the death of George Floyd and the repeated killings of unarmed black men at the hands of police, she feels things may be changing.

“This has always been slow work, but it seems to be hitting another gear,” she said.

Now, Fresno City College is creating a police academy task force that will recommend curriculum changes concentrating more on community policing, anti-racism and implicit bias, according to college President Carole Goldsmith.

The announcement comes a week after California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley called for police reform at the academy, according to CalMatters.

The task force will have its first meeting at the end of June and include students, Fresno Barrios Unidos, Fresno State professors, and local social justice organizers, Goldsmith said.

When the task force concludes, she wants to share the findings with other colleges.

“We need to rethink what it means to police in America,” she said. “We believe that the time is now to look deep in our past practice and within our current practice, so our community members, when they’re calling for reform, have a good understanding of what it is we are currently doing, and then determine together what the community needs in terms of the police education that we offer.”

Currently, cadets go through 1,030 hours of training before graduating from the academy. Exactly 664 of those hours are mandated from the state program, called Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST. The rest are Fresno City College requirements.

Of the 42 academies in the state, many are part of the California Community College system, and each incorporates its own requirements along with POST training.

FCC Police Academy Director Gary Fief said the college’s hours aren’t the highest in the state, but on the “upper limits.”

Fief, who spent 30 years as a California Highway Patrol officer, said he’s open to changes and is looking forward to working with the task force.

“All of us want to do the right thing and make sure we’re using the proper training for our officers.”

About 175 cadets graduate from the academy every year, and about 70% stay in Fresno to work.

Goldsmith said, depending on what the task force determines, the required hours could change.

Fief said even if the hours do get raised, he doesn’t see it deterring anyone from joining. The next closest academy is at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, and there are others in Bakersfield and Stockton.

“If there are things that are no longer relevant, they will take certain things out to be able to put more relevant things in,” Goldsmith said. “What they might find is that some of the material could be modified in such a way where it could meet the requirements of the community to be more responsive.”

In recent years, the college has increased the number of hours of instruction on community police practices a cadet receives, Goldsmith said.

“We learned from our community, more than once. And now we’re going to listen again.”

Cultural and implicit bias

Marcel Woodruff, a longtime community activist with Faith in the Valley, has been advocating for police reform. He was one of the speakers during the “We Can’t Breathe” protest in downtown Fresno on May 31.

Woodruff said he isn’t part of the task force, but he said departments should think about requiring officers to have a degree in criminology or sociology.

Cadets should have more training on cross-cultural communication, he said. For example, some people may get closer to others when they speak.

“Officers can sometimes mistake cultural expressions for threats,” he said. “They might become defensive when there’s no need to be.”

Woodruff also wants to see implicit bias training, which involves understanding how stereotypes people are not consciously aware of cloud their judgment.

“I think officers as professionals have to be trained to be aware of those judgments and those biases and be active agents of their own learning,” he said.

Community colleges are in a unique position to be able to have difficult conversations about race, according to Eric Payne, a trustee for State Center Community College District, which is FCC’s parent district.

He said any changes that take place at the academy would also have to transfer over to police departments, and that takes a cultural shift.

“It would require institutional changes,” he said. “Because I do believe there is a sense of resistance anytime there is a culture change. It’s going to take some really strong leadership.”

Trustee Annalisa Perea said she plans to bring a resolution to the next board meeting on July 7. It will be in support of “efforts for a top down review of our academy curriculum to identify opportunities to better prepare our officers to service our community.”

Not a new topic

Ray Ramirez, the director of Student Success and Equity at FCC, said the college has already been in talks for years about equity for black, Latinx and other underserved students.

“Even though there’s a national movement for racial equity, at Fresno City College, this is not a new topic,” he said.

“It’s not going to happen overnight, be at the police academy, be at the entire community college system. We are trying to fight years and decades and longer of systems and structures that were designed to help certain people and not help others.”

Ramirez is taking inspiration from California State University, San Diego, whose academic senate recently approved a resolution that called for more of a focus on racial equity and justice in police and criminal justice programs.

“I think it’s fair to say for a lot of people working in any industry or any big organization, it’s difficult to talk about race, even more so difficult to talk about racism.”

Kirk said that in the past few years, she’s seen a shift at the college in normalizing discussions about racial equity and bias. But there’s still more work to do, she said.

“Just over this weekend, folks are saying, ‘Hey, has anyone ever thought about looking at our curriculum?’ And of course, folks like me have been shouting this for years. Yes, yes, we have. But I’m glad you’re thinking about it.”

The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab on our website.

This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 12:52 PM.