Calif. City Selects 1st Female Police Chief: 'It was Never My Plan'

The city of Fresno named its new top law enforcement leader on Thursday in interim Chief Mindy Casto, making her the 24th police chief and the city’s first woman to hold the top cop job.

Casto, 49, has served the interim role in Fresno since June, when previous Chief Paco Balderrama resigned following an extramarital scandal.

She was chosen from a final four of candidates, which had been pared down by a consultant from 14 applicants, according to Mayor Jerry Dyer.

Casto and Dyer have had a long working relationship as he had been police chief for about two years when he promoted her to sergeant in 2003. He went on to promote her two more times.

He spoke highly of her Thursday.

“Mindy is well respected by her police officers, professional staff and those in the community,” he said. “In fact, over the past eight months, I can’t remember a week that has gone by where a member of the police department or a member of the community hasn’t reached out to me and encouraged me to appoint Mindy Casto as the permanent police chief.”

After 30 years in the department, Casto said she did not expect to ever be the chief.

“I’m grateful for God, because this wasn’t my plan,” she said. “It was never my plan, but it was God’s plan, and that’s why I’m standing here.”

Casto said the preservation of life is her top priority in Fresno, but that she hopes to improve police response to non-emergencies, a goal she has mentioned before.

“We’ll leverage technology and staffing and see what we can do to improve that, and then just making sure that we constantly monitor and improve the professionalism of our officers, training, mentoring and accountability when necessary,” she said.

The selection process of Casto lasted about eight months, significantly shorter than two previous searches that lasted about a year each.

Dyer said of the the three others in the final four, one dropped out before interviews, one had been a chief in a Nevada city but had not held that role in about five years and one was a former chief on the East Coast working as a consultant.

He said Casto had proven herself as the right person while on the job.

He pointed specifically to three incidents, which included the arrest of an officer accused of sex crimes related to a child, the suicide of an officer and an officer-involved shooting.

“Chief Castro was poised during the media interviews and handled each of those incidents with tremendous compassion and professionalism,” he said.

Casto takes on a department that has never been larger. The Fresno Police Department employs 861 police officers and has a budget for 926, police said in January.

The city has seen a declining crime rate, matching national trends. The eight violent crimes tracked by the FBI were particularly high in Fresno in 2020, and have trended down since.

The Fresno Police Officers Union contract expires mid-year so Casto will face new negotiations in a department that for years has tried to reduce overtime spending.

Her predecessor, Balderrama, rankled a large swath of officers and the union by trying to upend scheduling he saw as inefficient. It remains unclear if Casto will wade into that issue in negotiations.

Balderrama had proposed a “new hybrid platoon shift” that would lessen the number of officers patrolling on Wednesdays, which has a lower volume of calls, and distribute them to other days of the week. He also said it was a money-saving move.

Those proposed changes were unpopular with rank-and-file officers. The issue was evidently so contentious that it contributed to low morale even before news broke of the chief’s affair with the wife of an officer and former union leader, Jordan Wamhoff, multiple sources told The Bee.

The Fresno police patrol schedule was also a big area of contention in the last round of contract negotiations.

City Manager Georgeanne White noted city leaders met with about 40 community heads to discuss what they wanted from a new police chief before the search was finalized.

The Rev. DJ Criner of St. Rest Baptist Church said he was one of those leaders, adding he had stressed the importance of hiring someone from within the community.

He said he believes she has strong relationships with communities in West Fresno, where relationships with police and the disenfranchised can be difficult.

Criner said he appreciated that Casto had risen to the role of chief, noting its historic significance to the city.

“Sometimes a historical moment is not the right moment, and this is one of the first times that we have a historical moment and the right moment that mirror each other,” he said. “She has the heart of a leader. She doesn’t have the aspirations to put herself in front.”

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