Can Visalia cops please stop stealing from own police explorers? Thanks | Opinion
Law enforcement officers getting arrested for embezzlement is extremely rare, according to the most cited study I could find about the nature and rate of police crime in the U.S.
Just not in Tulare County, where dirty cops are on quite a pace of late.
The recent arrest of Visalia Police Captain Luma Fahoum for suspicion of stealing nearly $50,000 from the police explorers program may qualify as a shock, but it can’t be described as a one-time occurrence.
Not when less than six months have passed since former police sergeant Rafael Vasquez from neighboring Farmersville was formally accused of thieving $35,000 from his department’s police explorers program and police academy.
Before long, Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward will have to form a special police embezzlement task force. Because this is getting ridiculous.
How can teenagers and young adults growing up in and around Visalia possibly be inspired to become trusted, responsible members of law enforcement – the aim of every police explorer program – when the police officers who oversee those programs are themselves crooks?
Talk about rotten apples growing from poisoned trees. Or in Visalia’s case, rotten oranges.
Based on the Visalia Police Department’s chain of command chart, Fahoum’s management responsibilities ranked second only to Chief of Police Justin Salazar. Until being placed on administrative leave in September while the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office investigation was underway, she oversaw both of the city’s policing districts and three other units.
Between 2017 and 2023, Fahoum is alleged to have spent nearly $50,000 from a bank account reserved for police explorer donations at casinos, gas stations and retail stores for her own personal use. During that time she got promoted to captain and in 2023 took home $189,408 in total pay.
One would think making $189K in Visalia would be enough to compel a police captain not to steal from a nonprofit under their supervision. Evidently not. Fahoum now faces five felonies and up to three years in local jail.
Vasquez, who served as adviser and treasurer for the Farmersville police department’s explorer program and police officer’s association, also faces a three-year jail sentence after being arrested and charged in December. (The charges do not qualify for a state prison commitment.)
The former sergeant allegedly used digital transfers to embezzle roughly $35,000 from those programs between 2018 and 2023. Vasquez pleaded not guilty to four felonies in January and has a May 20 scheduled preliminary hearing.
If the once-every-five-months pace continues, Tulare County residents should brace themselves for another law enforcement corruption bombshell sometime in September.
Only wish I were joking.
Embezzlement a rare police crime
My attempt to contextualize this pattern of shame unearthed a 2016 study titled “Police Integrity Lost” that analyzed 6,724 cases of arrested officers in the U.S. between 2005 and 2011. (While not exactly recent, it’s the best data I could find.)
The study found that local and state police officers were arrested at a rate of 0.72 arrests for every 1,000 officers, which equates to less than one-tenth of 1%.
Of the total number of arrests, just 1.2% were for embezzlement. Within the larger category of profit-motivated arrests examined by the study, embezzlement ranked as the seventh-most frequent crime behind unclassified theft/larceny, false pretenses/swindle, narcotics/drug violation, robbery, theft from building and extortion/blackmail.
So what’s happening in Tulare County is highly unusual. Which either indicates randomness and bad luck, or something in its famously fertile soil that encourages this particular branch of police corruption to sprout.
There really isn’t a third explanation.
“As the Chief, I am heartbroken and disappointed with what led us to the criminal filing against Captain Fahoum,” Salazar said in a video posted on social media. “The captain position is the second-highest position in the Visalia Police Department, and a position that carries great weight, responsibility and trust.
“When something like this occurs, it has a significant impact on the organization, on our community and to the entire policing profession.”
If police chiefs across Tulare County and the San Joaquin Valley aren’t already keeping close tabs on their police explorer bank accounts, might be time for an audit.
