Cost of gun violence in Fresno finally has a price tag. It’s higher than you think
At 10 p.m. Tuesday in east central Fresno, a gunman approached an occupied car near Shaw and Marks avenues and started shooting. Two people, a man and a woman, were struck by bullets and hospitalized.
The total cost to taxpayers, present and future: $864,000. In this instance, times two.
The man was shot in a leg. The woman was shot in the head and listed in critical condition. If she dies, the shooting becomes a homicide. And the total cost to taxpayers increases to $2.4 million.
Thanks to a recent report by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, gun violence in Fresno finally has a price tag. The report hasn’t been made public (yet), but Faith in the Valley sent along an advance copy because, frankly, it couldn’t be better timed.
As Mayor Lee Brand and the City Council hash out next year’s budget in light of the national conversations about policing and race, room must be made for a community-based program proven to reduce the drain of human lives and, as the report details, public finances.
Bee readers are already familiar with Advanced Peace, which Brand vetoed last year after a council majority voted to partially fund it.
City leaders cannot let another opportunity slip away. Not when preventative measures for gang-related gun violence, which Fresno police say accounts for between 55% and 60% of all murders and shootings in the city, also make so much fiscal sense.
The Cost of Gun Violence report underscores that assertion with hard numbers.
“If Advance Peace saves just one life, and we’re confident it’ll save multiple lives, it more than pays for itself,” said Andy Levine, Faith in the Valley’s deputy director. “It’s just confirmation of what all along should’ve been a no-brainer and hopefully will be going forward.”
How costs are computed
Fresno is the 11th U.S. city and fourth in California examined by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. The study, funded by the California Wellness Foundation, tabulates all the governmental costs associated with gun homicides and injury shootings. (Fresno averaged 44 murders and 414 shooting incidents between 2017-19.)
The report’s authors broke down the costs into six categories: crime scene (police and fire/EMT response, cleanup, ambulance); hospital (trauma center, gunshot surgery); criminal justice (police investigation, DA/public defender, courts); incarceration (pre-trial, prison or jail); victim support (coroner’s office, compensation, social service benefits); and lost sales tax revenue (both criminal and victim).
Again, the report concludes each Fresno homicide costs taxpayers $2.4 million and each injury shooting costs them $864,000. That’s for one suspect. If there are two suspects, the costs jump to $4.6 million and $1.5 million, respectively.
To compile their figures, the authors interviewed Fresno police officials, trauma center employees and county public defenders; reviewed local budgets, salary charts, judicial surveys and national databases; and relied on data provided by state and federal agencies.
A result everyone wants
The cost of violence numbers for Fresno are a little less than those for Stockton, which in 2018 formed a four-year partnership with Advance Peace joining Sacramento and Richmond.
“Shooting response and investigation is very time consuming,” the report’s authors write. “If police officers were freed up to focus on more service to the community, response times on all calls for service could increase, improved engagement with the community could be achieved, and overall crime could be reduced.”
Isn’t that what everyone embroiled in the debate over public safety, both those who support every law enforcement action and the Fresno PD’s loudest critics, ultimately wants?
I sure hope so.
Advance Peace isn’t about defunding the police or stripping away police authority. Nor is about paying gang-bangers not to shoot each other. It’s about making a tiny investment in a group of people, mostly young black and brown men usually known to authorities and responsible for most of Fresno’s gun violence, that society has long ignored or discarded.
Which is essentially what so many in this city and others are marching about.
“We’ve got to take this opportunity to re-imagine public safety, not by defunding it but by reinvesting in community-based gun violence prevention and parks,” Levine said. “Preventative measures that truly make people safe and not just quarantine the problem.”
Advance Peace, not a copy
I sense a growing momentum for “exploring anti-gun violence programs” among local politicians, but we can’t let ourselves get hoodwinked.
It’s paramount Fresno partner with Advance Peace, a nonprofit that Fresno EOC has agreed to house, and not form some facsimile that operates under the auspices of the Fresno PD — as mayor-elect Jerry Dyer and others have both publicly and privately suggested.
Advance Peace relies on reformed gang members to mentor current gang members deemed most likely to commit a shooting. Trust is vital to establishing and maintaining those relationships, which is why police should be collaborators, but not in command.
Fresno cannot afford to fumble a second chance. Lives and tax dollars will both be spared.
