My name is Zach Baroni. I reside in District 2. I demand that City Council defund Fresno PD so that their budget takes up no more than 1/3 of the budget. It is unconscionable that police take up more than half of our city's budget. It disturbs me that, on average, over a million dollars of my tax money is paid out to settle claims of police misconduct. Why am I spending my money to protect criminal police? When you give people guns and immunity from prosecution (for the most part), they will inevitable become bullies. Please redirect money from the police department to unarmed persons who can actually help keep our community safe -- social workers, medical workers, housing for our homeless family, and economic/infrastructure development programs. Thank you.
Hello, I'm contacting you to express my belief that we reduce the spending toward the fresno police department. I believe the police have been given too much responsibility when it comes to solving conflicts and problems around the city. Our budget has over militarized them, giving them access to equipment that is unnecessary for their job. Ultimately, the police need a complete rework and I would like to see that reflected in our budget. Put the money in mental health services, social working, or youth organizations/education.
Thank you
My name is Karina Juarez. I encourage the city council to prioritize funding for: (parks, housing, code enforcement, youth programs, advance peace, see the letter submitted) Our community needs deeper investment in parks, quality housing, and other services that create safety for everyone.
It is time as citizens of Fresno we acknowledge how the systems, especially the police, benefit those of us who are affluent and white. We must move forward to create equity and justice in our City for those who continue to be marginalized. We must adjust our police budget! Stop paying $200,000 for new SWAT tanks that turn our streets into a war-zone. Instead invest in programs meant to PREVENT violence.
-Invest in programs such as Advance Peace, which have been shown to decrease gun violence by more than 55%! (Especially when gun violence costs our City $864,000 per incident)
-We need an unbiased citizens oversight committee, such as the Civil Service Board, but they must have the ability to conduct parallel investigations and review Internal Investigations about the police.
-Our officers must be trained in de-escalation tactics.
-The community must have a say in the hiring of the new police chief.
-And we NEED a trained MENTAL HEALTH OFFICER to be the MANDATORY first responder for all major 911 calls.
We know the police will not police themselves. The last time Fresno had budget cuts the PD cut all the preventative programs such as neighborhood officers, but continued to invest in weapons of war. Our City is a city full of promise and potential. We must stop the same old-same old and move to the future. Stop perpetuating racism and violence. Invest in our future: the youth of our city.
Along with divesting funds from police and investing those funds into the most marginalized communities (see Fresno State NAACP's demands), Fresno PD must enact these six policies immediately:
1. Ban chokeholds and strangleholds
2. Require de-escalation
3. Exhaust all alternatives before shooting
4. Ban shooting at moving vehicles
5. Establish use of force continuum
6. Require all force be reported
Our city has been a beautiful example of what peaceful protesting can look like. This is the city's opportunity to show how further steps can be taken toward pursuing peace, especially in our most disenfranchised communities.
Good morning. I wish to add my name to the list of many Fresno city residents who believe their tax payer money would be better spent by reinvesting in community social services. The Fresno police department does not need the majority of the city’s budget. Please consider defunding them.
My name is Giovanne Coronel-Fuentes I encourage the city council to prioritize funding for: (parks, housing, code enforcement, youth programs, advance peace, see the letter submitted) Our community needs deeper investment in parks, quality housing, and other services that create safety for everyone.
I encourage the city council to prioritize funding for: (parks, housing, code enforcement, youth programs, advance peace, see the letter submitted) Our community needs deeper investment in parks, quality housing, and other services that create safety for everyone.
There is no reason for PD to write cold property crimes when there is no identifiable property or suspect information such as video or witness descriptions. Discontinue this just like non injury collision reports.
I grew up in Clovis and recently learned far more about civil rights, systematic racism, and Fresno's history of oppression than I ever did in Clovis education. It is our government's responsibility, too, to know our history and be on the right side of it. This is one of those critical moments that will define Fresno government as serving all Fresnans, especially those in need, or only those in priviledge and power.
I advocate for defunding the police and funding social programs instead. Addressing root causes of crime will be far more effective than policing. The answer is not to be tougher on crime but to understand why it happens and address the forces that drives people to it. We can prevent crime and lift up our communities by fighting for social equality, NOT sending police officers for every problem. The ultimate goal should be a society that no longer needs the police - NOT a bigger police department, especially when it's been proven that body cams and anti-racism/de-escalation training have been largely ineffective. I recommend following the Fresno NAACP list of demands as Cheyenne K. linked. Please do not follow the 8cantwait demands, which many police departments already implement, only to be ineffective for their major loopholes.
We are still seated very far from a just system here in Fresno. There needs to be practices and preventive measures in place immediately. And if it means a complete halt to combat excessive use of force and unjust practices...then that is what is required. Our decision is really about choosing the lesser of two evils. Law and Order in Fresno has taken an Oath to protect and Serve. When the people do not feel protected and fear your service...what and whose purpose are you really serving. If it takes a complete halt to define and change the dynamics on these things...By all means. I'm for it!
I have lived in Fresno all my life and it truly is a tale of two cities. I stand with the vast majority of our residents demanding we defund the FPD. The funds removed from the police budget should go directly to help the communities in south and west Fresno that have been the most impacted by police brutality and the neglect of former city councils. In order to reduce crime we need address the causes not the symptoms. We need after school and community outreach programs, parks, housing, clean water, social workers on calls for the mentally ill and non violent first response calls.
City council, Fresnans are saying the time for change is now for a better Fresno or One Fresno as the Mayor elect claims. The poorest in our city are those that had been historically redlined years ago for their diversity. The black, latino, and Hmong communities have suffered a lack of help from the city and constant oversight from the police. The budget needs to become more transparent with regular auditing to ensure funds are going to the neighborhoods that need it most and not just to wealthy developers in North Fresno. It's time we put democratic control into the voting for a police chief for Fresno. The list of Demands of the Fresno State NAACP Should also be taken into account. Thank you, I believe you will choose to be on the right side of history. (https://www.facebook.com/naacp17ai/photos/a.802000823571772/943973339374519/).
I would like to advocate in Defunding the police budget and instead relocate that money back into our schools and community. We should be creating & supporting Black community leader’s efforts to solve the crisis in our community like food insecurity. Please allocate that money to our under served community. I would also advocate to pull Police personal from schools and fellow thru with actions & demands Fresno State NAACP has presented you with Mayor. Thank you.
I am a retired physician and I reside in District 2. Our city budget is a moral statement of the priorities of the people of Fresno. Funding for the public welfare and quality of life should take precedence over police funding because they address the underlying social problems that lead to crime.
In these transformative time I would ask that the Fresno City Council appropriately allocate funds for public safety. By public safety I am referring to not only to the protection of the general public against crime by having police enforce the laws, but also the welfare and quality of life of the general public.
If everyone receives fair and equitable justice, employment, housing, education, health care, transportation, recreation and a safe environment with clean water and air, the quality of life improves along with the feeling of safety in the public. When those societal problems are addressed crime goes down. Improving the public welfare and well-being by improving the quality of life should involve the police minimally, if at all. Improved quality of life results in less need for police.
Spending more on law enforcement when the problems are due to social problems does not improve the public’s safety or our quality of life. Spend less on police, and more on education, affordable housing, justice, good jobs, transportation, health care, mental health services and a clean environment.
I am a resident of District 1. As a mental health therapist, small-business owner, and a member of the community, I demand defunding and divesting police funding into community-led, facing, and rooted processes. I demand that we enact law and not policy, to ensure community safety.
We as a community understand the root and solutions to Fresno’s historical and deeply entrenched racist community policing strategies. I would like the counsel to consider their meaning of ‘effective and authentic public participation’. Effective and authentic public participation involving more than finding the right tools, gatekeepers (straw men/women), and techniques. Authentic public participation requires centering and directly coming alongside our impacted people and communities you represent in your respective districts without the crutch of people YOU believe are the voice of our voiceless.
Authentic public participation requires YOU to do away with the “middle man” concept which historically continues to divide whole communities, forces communities to choose sides, and inevitably leads to monies continuing to be pipelined into the same programs which only reach a limited few within the community.
Authentic public participation means you are required to re-think YOUR vision of the underlying gap that isn’t being spoken of “... the relationships between administrators and citizens”.
We demand a decrease in funds of the Fresno Police Department. FPD takes 53% of all the funds in Fresno. Parks and Recreation is underfund and we could use the money we take from FPD to creat more parks and PARC workers. The money should also be used to create an independent body to investigate police misconduct. It’s ridiculous that the Fresno Police Department can investigate itself in cases of alleged wrong doing.
I'm demanding that the city council divest all funds from Fresno PD in order to better invest in providing Fresnans with the resources and services that are proven to reduce crime. Fresno PD killed or seriously injured 23 people from 2016-2018 and Black Fresnans are far more likely than white Fresnans to be the victim of police brutality, despite being a much smaller percentage of the population. Knowing that Fresno PD has a history of use of excessive force and discriminatory policing, the City Council must use their authority to shift these funds away from a harmful entity and toward services such as housing, mental health counseling, drug rehabilitation, and living wages. Follow in the footsteps of Minneapolis and San Francisco in disbanding the police department in order to create a new population of emergency responders who are trained in de-escalation, educated in human behavior, and not simply given violent tools to use as they see fit to harass Black people in Fresno. The City Council has a duty to acknowledge the harm Fresno PD inflicts on our city and invest instead in the wellbeing of all Fresnans.
Dear City Council Members,
I am a resident in Southeast part of Fresno. As a member of the community I ask that we defund the police. I ask that instead we allocate those funds to improved regions of Fresno that are underdeveloped. It is evident the structured and kempt funding of Northern Fresno, where a larger community of white ethnic groups reside in, but other regions of Fresno, such as Western Fresno are visibly underfunded, where a larger community of black and other non-white residents live. I would also like to ask that we change law enforcement policies in order to provide a safer community for everyone in Fresno, but especially for our black residents. The 8cantwait policies are a great start. They are 8 police reform policies that we should enact that drastically decrease police violence by 72%. These policies include requiring de-escalation, warnings before shooting, exhausting all alternative before shooting, the use of force continuum, comprehensive reporting, as well as requiring a duty to intervene, and the banning of chokeholds and shooting at moving vehicles. More is explained through the 8cantwait.org website. I ask that you take our input into consideration when you decide where to allocate the future funding of Fresno. Thank you.
Thank you, City Council, for this opportunity to share my support of police defunding and restructuring in a way that advances Fresno State NAACP's demands that were presented on June 11, 2020, at the budget workshop. My name is Karen Crozier. As a native and current resident of southwest Fresno (93706), I'm calling on the city of Fresno to transform law enforcement policies, processes, paradigms, and practices that have been deadly especially to low-income, nonwhite people and communities. The presumed criminality of nonwhite people and dismissal of their humanity are embedded into the very fabric of our nation and city that must be ERASED and ERADICATED with urgency, vigilance, creativity, and shared decision-making power between the people and public officials. In this potential new era of systemic racial healing and justice in Fresno, there is no room for gradualism or stall tactics that do not take seriously the brevity of this moment. The historical, and contemporary, pain and oppression of people of African descent in the U.S. were on full display, once again, in the murder of George Floyd. We must act NOW at multiple levels and in comprehensive ways. In closing, as a Christian minister, it is my hope and prayer that the City Council will embrace this moment and join an old movement of proclaiming the human dignity and value of black lives.
Please defund the police department and redistribute funds to assist the community in education, public social services, mental health resources, women & children health care, and housing. Our community is in need of continued financial support in these areas.
My name is Zach Baroni. I reside in District 2. I demand that City Council defund Fresno PD so that their budget takes up no more than 1/3 of the budget. It is unconscionable that police take up more than half of our city's budget. It disturbs me that, on average, over a million dollars of my tax money is paid out to settle claims of police misconduct. Why am I spending my money to protect criminal police? When you give people guns and immunity from prosecution (for the most part), they will inevitable become bullies. Please redirect money from the police department to unarmed persons who can actually help keep our community safe -- social workers, medical workers, housing for our homeless family, and economic/infrastructure development programs. Thank you.
Hello, I'm contacting you to express my belief that we reduce the spending toward the fresno police department. I believe the police have been given too much responsibility when it comes to solving conflicts and problems around the city. Our budget has over militarized them, giving them access to equipment that is unnecessary for their job. Ultimately, the police need a complete rework and I would like to see that reflected in our budget. Put the money in mental health services, social working, or youth organizations/education.
Thank you
My name is Karina Juarez. I encourage the city council to prioritize funding for: (parks, housing, code enforcement, youth programs, advance peace, see the letter submitted) Our community needs deeper investment in parks, quality housing, and other services that create safety for everyone.
It is time as citizens of Fresno we acknowledge how the systems, especially the police, benefit those of us who are affluent and white. We must move forward to create equity and justice in our City for those who continue to be marginalized. We must adjust our police budget! Stop paying $200,000 for new SWAT tanks that turn our streets into a war-zone. Instead invest in programs meant to PREVENT violence.
-Invest in programs such as Advance Peace, which have been shown to decrease gun violence by more than 55%! (Especially when gun violence costs our City $864,000 per incident)
-We need an unbiased citizens oversight committee, such as the Civil Service Board, but they must have the ability to conduct parallel investigations and review Internal Investigations about the police.
-Our officers must be trained in de-escalation tactics.
-The community must have a say in the hiring of the new police chief.
-And we NEED a trained MENTAL HEALTH OFFICER to be the MANDATORY first responder for all major 911 calls.
We know the police will not police themselves. The last time Fresno had budget cuts the PD cut all the preventative programs such as neighborhood officers, but continued to invest in weapons of war. Our City is a city full of promise and potential. We must stop the same old-same old and move to the future. Stop perpetuating racism and violence. Invest in our future: the youth of our city.
Along with divesting funds from police and investing those funds into the most marginalized communities (see Fresno State NAACP's demands), Fresno PD must enact these six policies immediately:
1. Ban chokeholds and strangleholds
2. Require de-escalation
3. Exhaust all alternatives before shooting
4. Ban shooting at moving vehicles
5. Establish use of force continuum
6. Require all force be reported
Our city has been a beautiful example of what peaceful protesting can look like. This is the city's opportunity to show how further steps can be taken toward pursuing peace, especially in our most disenfranchised communities.
Good morning. I wish to add my name to the list of many Fresno city residents who believe their tax payer money would be better spent by reinvesting in community social services. The Fresno police department does not need the majority of the city’s budget. Please consider defunding them.
My name is Giovanne Coronel-Fuentes I encourage the city council to prioritize funding for: (parks, housing, code enforcement, youth programs, advance peace, see the letter submitted) Our community needs deeper investment in parks, quality housing, and other services that create safety for everyone.
I encourage the city council to prioritize funding for: (parks, housing, code enforcement, youth programs, advance peace, see the letter submitted) Our community needs deeper investment in parks, quality housing, and other services that create safety for everyone.
There is no reason for PD to write cold property crimes when there is no identifiable property or suspect information such as video or witness descriptions. Discontinue this just like non injury collision reports.
I grew up in Clovis and recently learned far more about civil rights, systematic racism, and Fresno's history of oppression than I ever did in Clovis education. It is our government's responsibility, too, to know our history and be on the right side of it. This is one of those critical moments that will define Fresno government as serving all Fresnans, especially those in need, or only those in priviledge and power.
I advocate for defunding the police and funding social programs instead. Addressing root causes of crime will be far more effective than policing. The answer is not to be tougher on crime but to understand why it happens and address the forces that drives people to it. We can prevent crime and lift up our communities by fighting for social equality, NOT sending police officers for every problem. The ultimate goal should be a society that no longer needs the police - NOT a bigger police department, especially when it's been proven that body cams and anti-racism/de-escalation training have been largely ineffective. I recommend following the Fresno NAACP list of demands as Cheyenne K. linked. Please do not follow the 8cantwait demands, which many police departments already implement, only to be ineffective for their major loopholes.
We are still seated very far from a just system here in Fresno. There needs to be practices and preventive measures in place immediately. And if it means a complete halt to combat excessive use of force and unjust practices...then that is what is required. Our decision is really about choosing the lesser of two evils. Law and Order in Fresno has taken an Oath to protect and Serve. When the people do not feel protected and fear your service...what and whose purpose are you really serving. If it takes a complete halt to define and change the dynamics on these things...By all means. I'm for it!
I have lived in Fresno all my life and it truly is a tale of two cities. I stand with the vast majority of our residents demanding we defund the FPD. The funds removed from the police budget should go directly to help the communities in south and west Fresno that have been the most impacted by police brutality and the neglect of former city councils. In order to reduce crime we need address the causes not the symptoms. We need after school and community outreach programs, parks, housing, clean water, social workers on calls for the mentally ill and non violent first response calls.
City council, Fresnans are saying the time for change is now for a better Fresno or One Fresno as the Mayor elect claims. The poorest in our city are those that had been historically redlined years ago for their diversity. The black, latino, and Hmong communities have suffered a lack of help from the city and constant oversight from the police. The budget needs to become more transparent with regular auditing to ensure funds are going to the neighborhoods that need it most and not just to wealthy developers in North Fresno. It's time we put democratic control into the voting for a police chief for Fresno. The list of Demands of the Fresno State NAACP Should also be taken into account. Thank you, I believe you will choose to be on the right side of history. (https://www.facebook.com/naacp17ai/photos/a.802000823571772/943973339374519/).
Good morning City Council members,
I would like to advocate in Defunding the police budget and instead relocate that money back into our schools and community. We should be creating & supporting Black community leader’s efforts to solve the crisis in our community like food insecurity. Please allocate that money to our under served community. I would also advocate to pull Police personal from schools and fellow thru with actions & demands Fresno State NAACP has presented you with Mayor. Thank you.
I am a retired physician and I reside in District 2. Our city budget is a moral statement of the priorities of the people of Fresno. Funding for the public welfare and quality of life should take precedence over police funding because they address the underlying social problems that lead to crime.
In these transformative time I would ask that the Fresno City Council appropriately allocate funds for public safety. By public safety I am referring to not only to the protection of the general public against crime by having police enforce the laws, but also the welfare and quality of life of the general public.
If everyone receives fair and equitable justice, employment, housing, education, health care, transportation, recreation and a safe environment with clean water and air, the quality of life improves along with the feeling of safety in the public. When those societal problems are addressed crime goes down. Improving the public welfare and well-being by improving the quality of life should involve the police minimally, if at all. Improved quality of life results in less need for police.
Spending more on law enforcement when the problems are due to social problems does not improve the public’s safety or our quality of life. Spend less on police, and more on education, affordable housing, justice, good jobs, transportation, health care, mental health services and a clean environment.
James Mendez, MD
Dear Council Members,
I am a resident of District 1. As a mental health therapist, small-business owner, and a member of the community, I demand defunding and divesting police funding into community-led, facing, and rooted processes. I demand that we enact law and not policy, to ensure community safety.
We as a community understand the root and solutions to Fresno’s historical and deeply entrenched racist community policing strategies. I would like the counsel to consider their meaning of ‘effective and authentic public participation’. Effective and authentic public participation involving more than finding the right tools, gatekeepers (straw men/women), and techniques. Authentic public participation requires centering and directly coming alongside our impacted people and communities you represent in your respective districts without the crutch of people YOU believe are the voice of our voiceless.
Authentic public participation requires YOU to do away with the “middle man” concept which historically continues to divide whole communities, forces communities to choose sides, and inevitably leads to monies continuing to be pipelined into the same programs which only reach a limited few within the community.
Authentic public participation means you are required to re-think YOUR vision of the underlying gap that isn’t being spoken of “... the relationships between administrators and citizens”.
We demand a decrease in funds of the Fresno Police Department. FPD takes 53% of all the funds in Fresno. Parks and Recreation is underfund and we could use the money we take from FPD to creat more parks and PARC workers. The money should also be used to create an independent body to investigate police misconduct. It’s ridiculous that the Fresno Police Department can investigate itself in cases of alleged wrong doing.
I'm demanding that the city council divest all funds from Fresno PD in order to better invest in providing Fresnans with the resources and services that are proven to reduce crime. Fresno PD killed or seriously injured 23 people from 2016-2018 and Black Fresnans are far more likely than white Fresnans to be the victim of police brutality, despite being a much smaller percentage of the population. Knowing that Fresno PD has a history of use of excessive force and discriminatory policing, the City Council must use their authority to shift these funds away from a harmful entity and toward services such as housing, mental health counseling, drug rehabilitation, and living wages. Follow in the footsteps of Minneapolis and San Francisco in disbanding the police department in order to create a new population of emergency responders who are trained in de-escalation, educated in human behavior, and not simply given violent tools to use as they see fit to harass Black people in Fresno. The City Council has a duty to acknowledge the harm Fresno PD inflicts on our city and invest instead in the wellbeing of all Fresnans.
Dear City Council Members,
I am a resident in Southeast part of Fresno. As a member of the community I ask that we defund the police. I ask that instead we allocate those funds to improved regions of Fresno that are underdeveloped. It is evident the structured and kempt funding of Northern Fresno, where a larger community of white ethnic groups reside in, but other regions of Fresno, such as Western Fresno are visibly underfunded, where a larger community of black and other non-white residents live. I would also like to ask that we change law enforcement policies in order to provide a safer community for everyone in Fresno, but especially for our black residents. The 8cantwait policies are a great start. They are 8 police reform policies that we should enact that drastically decrease police violence by 72%. These policies include requiring de-escalation, warnings before shooting, exhausting all alternative before shooting, the use of force continuum, comprehensive reporting, as well as requiring a duty to intervene, and the banning of chokeholds and shooting at moving vehicles. More is explained through the 8cantwait.org website. I ask that you take our input into consideration when you decide where to allocate the future funding of Fresno. Thank you.
Thank you, City Council, for this opportunity to share my support of police defunding and restructuring in a way that advances Fresno State NAACP's demands that were presented on June 11, 2020, at the budget workshop. My name is Karen Crozier. As a native and current resident of southwest Fresno (93706), I'm calling on the city of Fresno to transform law enforcement policies, processes, paradigms, and practices that have been deadly especially to low-income, nonwhite people and communities. The presumed criminality of nonwhite people and dismissal of their humanity are embedded into the very fabric of our nation and city that must be ERASED and ERADICATED with urgency, vigilance, creativity, and shared decision-making power between the people and public officials. In this potential new era of systemic racial healing and justice in Fresno, there is no room for gradualism or stall tactics that do not take seriously the brevity of this moment. The historical, and contemporary, pain and oppression of people of African descent in the U.S. were on full display, once again, in the murder of George Floyd. We must act NOW at multiple levels and in comprehensive ways. In closing, as a Christian minister, it is my hope and prayer that the City Council will embrace this moment and join an old movement of proclaiming the human dignity and value of black lives.
Please defund the police department and redistribute funds to assist the community in education, public social services, mental health resources, women & children health care, and housing. Our community is in need of continued financial support in these areas.