What’s at stake?
Critics call for independent investigations into the botched arrest of a Fresno council candidate.
The arrest and quick exoneration of Fresno City Council Naindeep Singh this week sparked an angry backlash and hard questions for City Hall, and now many are calling for independent investigations surrounding the city’s hot-potato handling of the politically-charged fallout.
Singh’s arrest over the weekend was quashed by Tuesday afternoon, complete with a rare personal apology from the chief of police, who described the traffic stop as legitimate and said no political motivations were in play during the bogus arrest of one of the department’s loudest public critics just 10 days before the polls close.
Responding to a question from Fresnoland on Wednesday, Fresno-based attorney Kevin Little said no claims for damages have been filed in connection with Singh’s case.
Little said he is working on behalf of Singh in an effort “to get to the bottom of what at this point appears to be potential police and government misconduct, which is a threat to our free society.
“We are hoping to receive cooperation from the authorities to get to the bottom of what transpired,” Little said in the statement. “The election should be decided by people, not police officers, and that is the primary focus.”
In Singh’s race for the city council, Little, a longtime civil rights attorney, has donated to and endorsed Singh’s opponent, Rob Fuentes.
Just hours after Chief Mindy Casto walked back the police department’s now controversial arrest, the Fresno-based, pro-Singh Bains Law Offices sent a detailed letter to City Hall demanding an independent investigation into Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz and his handling of the Singh arrest.
Janz was the city official who first confirmed the arrest over the weekend to an independent blogger. Janz’s office doesn’t handle DUI cases — ever — but has specific oversight roles in local elections, including Singh’s race.
The letter, signed by attorney and law group founder Iqbal Singh Bains, questions the timing of the arrest, acknowledges concerns about the potential for political bias and debates the role Janz played in releasing the nonpublically available information.
The Bains law firm contributed $5,500 to Singh’s city council campaign in September 2025.
Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias, a Singh supporter, has already said he plans to call for an internal review to determine how news of the arrest leaked and whether any policies or procedures were violated.
Marcelino Valdez, a city attorney spokesperson, issued a brief statement Wednesday defending Janz.
“The City Attorney and his office are tasked with responding to matters of public record, a requirement under state and federal law. An arrest is a matter of public record,” Valdez said. “Simultaneous with the Fresno Police Department, the City Attorney’s Office confirmed an arrest that occurred within the city’s jurisdiction when asked by a journalist.”
Police say politics, race weren’t factors. Critics want the receipts
But questions over potential political motives in connection with the bogus arrest aren’t the only fears raised by Singh supporters and police critics.
Sandra Celedon, the president and CEO of Fresno Building Healthy Communities, and a Singh supporter, was among the prominent voices this week calling for an independent probe into whether racism played a role in the traffic stop that ended with the arrest of the 48-year-old school board trustee and progressive politician.
“The city should commission an independent review of this stop and release the body camera footage,” Celedon said in a statement to Fresnoland on Wednesday. “That review should look at whether race played a role.”
Fresnoland requested copies of police body-cam footage on Monday.
On Tuesday, the police chief said the footage could be released.
On Wednesday, the city refused to release the body camera footage, citing an “ongoing investigation.”
It wasn’t immediately clear, and police did not say what, if anything, officers might still be investigating in the wake of the negative test results.
Speaking with reporters earlier this week, Casto disputed the idea that racial profiling was a factor in the traffic stop.
A Fresno police spokesperson did not immediately respond to a list of detailed questions on Wednesday from Fresnoland.
Singh did not comment Wednesday and it remains unclear whether he has ruled out the possibility of suing City Hall and the police force.
Last year, Celedon’s Fresno BHC group teamed with California Catalyst on a report examining racial profiling at the Fresno Police Department. Celedon says the data only reflects what many in Fresno have known for years — people of color, and particularly men of color, face traffic stops in Fresno at disproportionate rates.
The report analyzed 2022 Fresno Police Department data collected under the 2015 state law known as the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA). Last year’s RIPA report continued showing higher rates of traffic stops involving Black and brown drivers, and lower rates for white drivers.
Celedon said Singh’s arrest in many ways typifies the problems and challenges documented in Fresno BHC’s co-report last year.
“Mr. Singh’s stop began with an expired registration sticker. That is exactly the kind of low-level violation our report flagged as a doorway to unnecessary escalation,” Celedon noted. “Here it escalated to an arrest, a towed car, a hospital blood draw and a public accusation against a man the department has now cleared.”
Last year’s state RIPA board report also noted that “oversaturation policing,” in which police staffing concentrates on specific neighborhoods or communities, “disproportionately harms marginalized communities and undermines public safety.”
‘Fresno deserves more’
And while questions about Singh’s traffic stop remain unanswered, extra police officers and patrol were assigned to monitor the Tower District last weekend in connection with a string of recent shootings in the nightlife neighborhood.
The extra police failed to stop the gun violence as someone fired off nearly a dozen gunshots during a dispute, but, at least in this case, the gunman missed and no injuries were reported.
But those extra officers managed to stop Singh for having expired registration tags while driving through the neighborhood he is campaigning to represent at City Hall.
And while it remains to be seen what, if anything, emerges from probes in the consequential arrest, Celedon and others say the city’s police force still has a racial-profiling problem.
“Fresno police spend almost all of their proactive patrol time on traffic stops, and those stops fall hardest on men of color,” Celedon said Wednesday in an emailed statement to Fresnoland. “That is especially true for minor paperwork and equipment violations that have little to do with safety.”
And while no evidence of a political motive has emerged, the idea that an otherwise good cop just got the high-stakes arrest wrong would be a lot easier for critics to swallow if it was only Singh’s first weird encounter with the city’s police force.
It’s not.
Singh has never publicly accused Fresno police of following him in unmarked vehicles during the fall of 2023.
But, he told Fresnoland in an interview late last year, that he had been followed by unidentified people following a meeting earlier that year between top police department brass and members of Fresno’s Hindu community, who, police have acknowledged, asked officers to monitor Singh and another man — without evidence — for alleged ties to organized crime.
And while both current and former Fresno cops denied following Singh in 2023, the City Hall meeting and other incidents triggered a second failed attempt to legislate beefed up training for police to identify transnational repression.
Celedon noted that most people in Singh’s position aren’t politically or socially connected enough to draw widespread attention in a common misdemeanor arrest.
“Most people stopped this way don’t get a press conference, a public platform or an expedited lab test. The question isn’t only what happened to Mr. Singh,” Celedon said. “It’s what happens to every other driver of color in Fresno who gets pulled over for an expired tag. That’s why we continue to call on the city to end stops for paperwork and equipment violations and focus its time on responding to actual calls for service.”
Celedon on Wednesday acknowledged City Hall’s public apology but said it’s not enough.
“We appreciate that Chief Casto and Mayor Dyer apologized. But an apology is not accountability,” Celedon said. “The chief claims the officer did nothing wrong, and the only follow-up planned is a routine debrief. Fresno deserves more than that.”
Fresnoland’s Julianna Morano and Pablo Orihuela contributed to this report.
