Pro-Community and Pro-Public Safety

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Three days after George Floyd was murdered under a police officer’s knee, I did what millions of Americans did: I vented my rage at the atrocity we’d witnessed unfold on social media.

“Burn it down,” I wrote, sharing footage of the Minneapolis police precinct in flames.” #blacklivesmatter No justice, no peace. Enough is enough.”

My opponents want that tweet to be the whole story. It isn’t.

Since the late 1990s, the Fresno Police Department has been involved in shootings at a rate that is 1.8 times more frequent than the Los Angeles Police Department, even though Los Angeles has almost eight times the population size of Fresno. Between 2015 and 2016, three fatal police shootings occurred within a nine-month window: 

• In September 2015, unarmed 40-year-old Freddy Centeno, who was struggling with mental health issues, was shot multiple times and died days later as a result of his injuries. 
• In March 2016, 34-year-old Raymond Angel Gonzalez was fatally shot by the same officer who killed Freddy. 
• In June 2016, the death of unarmed 19-year-old Dylan Noble sparked national attention and ultimately led the city to pay $2.8 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit after prosecutors declined to bring charges.

Then, in 2017, we all watched the video of 16-year-old unarmed Isaiah Murrietta-Golding being shot in the back of the head in broad daylight in the middle of a childcare center lawn, causing more national outrage and leading the city to pay $4.9 million to settle yet another civil rights lawsuit. 

At the core of who I am, I believe in community safety. Safety is not just about responding to incidents; it’s about taking a preventative approach to public security that prioritizes community care, connection, resources, and infrastructure so we can all be safe in our homes and neighborhoods. 

When I came home on May 25, 2020, after watching another video of a person being put to death, my heart was deep in grief for our community.  

When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t retreat into online outrage. I went to work. I joined the advocacy efforts that led to Fresno’s Black Lives Matter march, which led to something that actually mattered—the creation of the Fresno Commission on Police Reform.

Civil liberties advocates raised concerns that Fresno police were monitoring activists and journalists on social media during the 2020 racial justice protests.

My fellow commissioners—a group that included a retired police chief, a police deputy chief, and community justice advocates—elected me Vice-Chair.

The people who knew me, who worked alongside me, who saw me up close after that tweet went viral — they chose me to help lead the effort to fix the problems in our police department. 

Together, we did something so many other cities failed to do: we built consensus for real solutions to improve public safety and police accountability.

Our commission created 73 recommendations. Not slogans—actual policy. Mental health professionals responding to crisis calls instead of armed officers. De-escalation training requirements. A civilian oversight board with real teeth. Use of force restrictions. Accountability measures that put corrective actions in officers’ personnel files.

When we presented our findings, I said something my critics never mention: “The overarching message that we heard time and time again was this was really about being pro-community and pro-safety. Those two systems and two communities are not in opposition.”

Pro-community and pro-public safety. That’s what I believe. That’s what I fought for.

But here is the real issue: the City of Fresno failed to fully implement the 73 recommendations.

As of 2023, the Fresno Police Department had implemented only 32 of those recommendations. My opponent is a city council member, responsible for overseeing the department. Why haven’t the recommendations been implemented fully? 

Most recently, a former Fresno narcotics detective was arrested and charged with grand theft after allegedly stealing more than $60,000 from the department’s evidence room and falsifying reports. Where is the accountability? 

All of these incidents were painful for the community and eroded public trust in our institutions.

Being pro-public safety requires accountability. That is why I have always stood up for our communities and called out systems when they cause harm. It’s easy to say you are for something; it takes real leadership to have hard conversations, share grief openly, and take necessary actions to implement the changes you want you see.

My work didn’t start or stop with the Fresno Commission on Police Reform. I partnered with Friends of Calwa to establish a Neighborhood Watch Association. I co-created the Community Justice Network to bring community-based organizations together to share resources and align on policy and advocacy efforts to better support safety in our communities. I supported bringing Advance Peace to Fresno and helped secure the first round of funding to reduce gun violence. I partnered with the Community Justice Center to support youth diversion programs intended to keep young people out of the criminal justice system and support women returning home. I partnered with Live Again Fresno to create safe spaces for children in South Fresno. And I continued to invest in young people through the Youth Internship Program, providing paid opportunities for positive work. 

That work still continues. When the city claimed progress it hadn’t made, I called them out publicly. I’ll still hold people in power accountable—because the point was never the tweet. The point was to make Fresno safer.

When people ask me about May 2020, I don’t apologize for my grief. I pivot to what matters: my actions and the hard work of bringing people together and creating real solutions. I turned rage into action—I woke up the day after George Floyd was murdered and went to work protecting our community. I honored Freddy, Dylan, Raymond, and Isaiah by not allowing a moment of grief to consume me. I used that moment of despair and righteous anger to fuel me to keep working to build the kind of safety we deserve. 

That’s the difference between performance and purpose. Plenty of elected officials posted their outrage in 2020 and moved on. I turned mine into a model for how communities can actually address the thing everyone was angry about: lack of investment and accountability. That’s who I’ve always been, and that’s who I’ll continue to be as your Assemblymember.

That’s why I’m proud to have the endorsement of Smart Justice California and Initiate Justice Action – two organizations dedicated to advancing safety, human dignity, and healthier communities through sustained investment in social services, reentry programs, real accountability, and restorative justice.

My opponents will keep running that tweet. It’s all they have. They’ll ignore that I worked alongside law enforcement, community, and young people to implement real solutions so that we can all go home to our families at the end of each day. They’ll ignore that cops helped elect me Vice-Chair. They’ll ignore those 32 implemented reforms. They’ll ignore that I have helped create safety in this community through real investments and opportunities for all.

But voters in Assembly District 31 deserve to know the whole story. Not three words in a tweet—the six years of work that followed.