More cops? Shutdowns? City Hall scrambles to save the Tower District from street violence

Early Monday morning, Fresno restaurateur Bobby Salazar paused while wiping down the front door of his Olive Avenue club to consider a question he’s been asked before.

Would adding more city cops to patrol the Tower District on nights and weekends make the popular neighborhood safer in the wake of recent shootings?

Salazar didn’t blink.

“Yes. Definitely,” Salazar told Fresnoland. “Having police out front definitely helps keep the people in check.”

But not everyone agrees. And many other Tower District business owners and regulars didn’t want to talk about it due to fears of retaliation.

Two people suffered non-life-threatening gunshot wounds around 12:17 a.m. Sunday. Fresno Police Chief Mindy Casto said a large crowd gathered in the Tower District to celebrate the popular annual Halloween-themed Zombie Crawl when one person fired nine shots outside the nightclub at the Linden Avenue intersection.

Casto on Monday also announced the arrest of a suspect in the case, identified only as a 16-year-old male who was taken into custody Monday after an hourlong standoff with police at his Fowler home.

Casto did not comment on a specific motive for the shooting but said they are investigating whether the suspected shooter’s reported gang-ties were a factor.

Chatter around the Tower District on Monday morning saw people debating recent violence in the city’s most popular nightlife neighborhood. Four shootings over the last six months have many on edge on the heels of Sunday morning’s attack outside the MIA club on Olive Avenue.

Over the weekend, Tower District Councilmember Miguel Arias acknowledged frustration with the yearslong challenge of quelling nightlife violence. Arias floated the idea of a “temporary shutdown of nightlife operations in the Tower District.”

“We must put everything on the table,” Arias said in part on a social media post that quickly drew reactions from residents and businesses, including MIA.

“We all want safer streets and an end to the violence,” MIA spokespersons said on social media. “But shutting down businesses, eliminating jobs and taking away places where our community comes together is NOT the answer. Stop blaming the businesses and start holding the people pulling the triggers accountable. GO AFTER THE CRIMINALS. NOT THE COMMUNITY.”

MIA club owners couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Monday, but released a statement over the weekend, saying they were cooperating with the police investigation and reviewing surveillance footage from the incident.

And while there was no shortage of online criticism directed at the MIA club owners, businesses, like Salazar and others, said even a temporary closure was a bad idea.

“That’s a bad business move,” Salazar said Monday, standing in front of his bar, across the street from the MIA club. “That just keeps people away from Tower, this is where people can come out and go clubbing.”

Next door, Joel Lopez, who has owned the Perfect Blend cigar lounge for 30 years, said he couldn’t comment directly on the weekend violence, but said he would not support shutting down the businesses as a public safety solution.

“It’s a tough situation because I know the police are doing everything they can,” Lopez said Monday. “But shutting down businesses is not the right answer.”

Other businesses declined to speak on the record Monday, and while some said they had no opinion either way, none said they favored a shutdown.

Sunday’s early-morning violence comes amid a massive police department weekend deployment spree in the Tower District that The Fresno Bee says has seen policing costs explode by more than 900%.

While Salazar acknowledged the issues facing City Hall, he also said business owners in general and club owners in particular, have a responsibility to work with the city to prevent violence.

“I’d advise them to have police on overtime in front of any club,” Salazar said.

He said he regularly works with the city to hire two city police officers to work security outside his club on weekends. He acknowledged the cost is not cheap — he estimated it cost him about $800 per night to have two police officers outside his club between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. — but said it works.

“Police in front of each and around the whole area,” Salazar said. “If you open as a nightclub, you need more police.”

And, for now at least, the city plans to add additional police officers and more surveillance cameras. Police said street food vendors will be forced to operate together from the same location, a parking lot northwest corner of Van Ness and Fulton.

Dyer said he shared public safety concerns but said the city’s response to this weekend’s violence should reassure the public.

“We want people to take advantage of the restaurants and the bars and even the entertainment areas, the nightlife,” Dyer said. “But we want people to do it in the right way. We want to draw the right people into the Tower District. ”

He later added, “the problem is we don’t know who those people are until the feud erupts, until the fight occurs, until somebody pulls out a gun like they did Saturday and ultimately ends up shooting two people.”

Arias’ proposal of a temporary shutdown was not discussed at Monday’s news conference at City Hall.

City leaders, including Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer, Casto and councilmembers said at Monday’s news conference that there would be a community meeting on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Tower Theatre to discuss the imminent changes to the neighborhood, and to get feedback on other possible solutions.

A separate community meeting is also planned for Wednesday at the MIA club. The meeting was announced last week, several days before Sunday’s violence..

Other Tower businesses, like Ragin Records, posted criticism of area businesses they said were “raking in” big profits and responsible for most of the trouble, but the post stopped short of naming names.

The debate over whether more police officers automatically equals safer public streets is an old debate. 

On the one hand, law enforcement leaders like District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp don’t blink when they tell you more policing equals more public safety. But other experts, like Dimitrios Mastoras, vice president of Night Safe, told The Bee that simply throwing money at a problem doesn’t automatically make anything safer. Night Safe is a consulting firm that helps cities manage nightlife.

Conversations around Tower District safety are nothing new. A year ago, the City Hall scrapped a proposal to eliminate street food vendors on nights and weekends, which city leaders claimed would help stem the violence.