The Fresno Police Department is reviewing part of its video policing action plan in response to a critical report.
Retired Federal Judge, Oliver Wanger, performed an audit of the department's video camera system. He did it free of charge to the city. In the report, Wanger says the unit is grossly underfunded and understaffed.
Year after year, since 2008, funding for Fresno's Video Policing Unit has gone down. It once received $1 million of the budget. Today, it gets $135,000.
"It's not even a drop in the bucket and that's one of the huge issues," said Hon. Oliver Wanger.
Auditor, Oliver Wanger, thinks police have solid infrastructure in place. 177 cameras record city streets 24/7 and hard drives store the video up to 30 days. However...
"The cameras are not staffed many hours of the day throughout the year," said Wanger.
It's the job of patrol officers, who are on light duty, to monitor the screens. Their supervisor is a retired sergeant who works just two days a week.
"These people are doing work and meeting their responsibilities above the call of duty, but there's got to be more," said Wanger.
Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer reviewed Wanger's report.
"There were no surprises," said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer.
Tough economic times have prevented Chief Dyer from hiring more people. But now, private and government funding is helping him expand. Come April, a vacant room at police headquarters will be converted into a Real-Time Crime Center. Chief Dyer says staff will be in place to monitor camera activity around the clock.
"For the purpose of getting that information out to our police officers in real time before they even respond to a call to make sure they have that information in their hand," said Chief Dyer.
The other big recommendation Wanger makes in the audit is to implement more supervision of video saved in the media library. This is to ensure accurate records are kept of how many crimes the cameras captured and how many they deterred.