Reality Check is a Fresno Bee series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a tip? Email tips@fresnobee.com .
Fresno city leaders say they’re moving the street vendor portion of a popular downtown art event from Thursdays to Wednesdays because there’s more police patrol scheduled then — a move criticized by police union leadership.
ArtHop began in the mid-1990s as a way for local artists to showcase their work to the public. In recent years, the event has grown to become a monthly street fair that attracts an estimated 15,000 attendees .
Last month, city officials announced they’d split ArtHop into two events: The regular Thursday event would no longer include street vendors without permits. Thursday night would be reserved for indoor art galleries, as was originally intended. A new street fair-type event with the street vendors would be held on Wednesdays, when there are more police patrols on duty for crowd control.
One reason for the change, the city has argued, is that there are more police officers scheduled to work on Wednesdays already. More safety at ArtHop is crucial in light of safety threats, city officials have said. Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said there was a gang-related shooting at a June ArtHop event in which 40 rounds were fired. Last year, there was a fatal stabbing downtown following an ArtHop event.
Critics of the city’s overhaul of the beloved event have asked why the city couldn’t just change the days police officers work.
“I’m just curious as to why you’re saying that the police is mostly available on Wednesdays,” asked one woman in the audience at a July 31 meeting hosted by Dyer and Councilmember Miguel Arias. “If you really are in charge of the schedule of the police — I mean, you should be, you’re the city — I think that you could change the day from Wednesday to Thursday easily.”
Dyer and Arias said the reason they can’t change the schedule is because any such changes have to be negotiated with the police union. The city’s contract with FPOA expired in June and negotiations are ongoing.
“Believe me, I’ve tried to get this schedule changed for many, many years,” Dyer said at the event.
“If I could flip a switch and say ‘yes we have all the police on Thursday,’ believe me (we) wouldn’t even be here today,” he added.
Another reason is cost: The city could, in theory, pay for the policing on Thursday nights through a contract policing agreement, but Dyer said the city doesn’t want to incur that expense when there are already more police available on Wednesdays.
City spokesperson Sontaya Rose told The Bee in July that the existing 4/10 schedule was negotiated into the Fresno Police Officers Association’s Memorandum of Understanding contract with the City of Fresno several decades ago. Under this schedule, officers work four 10-hour days followed by three consecutive days off.
“As a result, any changes to this schedule must be made through contract negotiations,” she said.
Fresno Police Officers Association President Brandon Wiemiller said in a statement to The Bee that the current patrol schedule — known as a platoon schedule — was implemented when Dyer was chief. His tenure was from July 2001 to October 2019 .
“Our current patrol has been in place for a decade,” Wiemiller said. “Using the patrol schedule as a scapegoat for whatever they are trying to do to ArtHop is completely disingenuous.”
Prior to his eventual resignation, former Fresno Police Chief Paco Balderrama said his “big goal” for the upcoming year was to make major changes to the patrol schedule to spread patrol officers across the week to improve call response times.
Balderrama’s proposed plan would also reduce the need to rely on overtime expenditures during peak crime activity when officers are called in for backup, which would ultimately affect officers’ take-home pay .
It’s not immediately clear whether there will be any changes to the patrol schedule in the upcoming police union contract under negotiation. Several sources told The Bee a major schedule change is likely off the table in light of Balderrama’s departure.
“Every police chief, including Jerry Dyer, has sought to change the police department labor contract to end the over-staffing on the lowest day of the week (on Wednesday) that we have crime in the city,” Arias told The Bee. “And they have all failed because the union has refused to give that provision up.”
’ Sometimes, nobody’s happy in a compromise’
City leaders can’t unilaterally change the police patrol schedule.
Any change in working conditions falls under “meet and confer,” Wiemiller said. The patrol schedule is codified in the contract, meaning it can only be changed as a result of a new contract.
In general, schedule changes for patrol can be a tense area of contract negotiations, said Diane Goldstein, a retired lieutenant of the Redondo Beach Police Department and executive director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing drug policy and criminal justice solutions.
“The meet and confer process during labor negotiations, or when law enforcement leaders are trying to change the system, can, in fact, be very contentious,” she said. “The union is representing the line where policy is being dictated from the top down and it can create a lot of conflict.
“It’s never perfect, it can be really ugly,” she said.
During the meet and confer process, Goldstein said, it’s expected that officers may ask for things like raises or better medical and retirement benefits in exchange for a schedule change.
“Sometimes, nobody’s happy in a compromise,” she added.
The “sweet spot,” Goldstein said, is when a department can create a schedule that meets calls for service coverage needs while also offering an appropriate labor contract that retains and attracts officers.
“Really the question would be: What is the city willing to give up for better coverage for calls for service?”
City declines to release patrol information
The Bee submitted a Public Records Act Request with the city of Fresno on July 8 for the current patrol schedule and assignments and other records related to Balderrama’s proposed changes.
On Aug. 2, the city declined to release any of the related documents, saying doing so “would unreasonably jeopardize public safety or compromise the safety of the officers if made public, and the public interest served in not disclosing the requested information clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure.”
The city also denied The Bee’s request for records related to the proposed patrol schedule changes, saying it was not required to disclose “a local agency’s deliberative processes, impressions, evaluations, opinions, recommendations, meeting minutes, research, work products, theories, or strategy.”
Balderrama said in June the proposed changes would put more cops on the street on any given day; allow for more time off; increase officer safety and shorten police call response times.
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