Fresno, CA

The Fresno Police Department (FPD) has paid approximately $29.7 million in documented civil settlements between 2010 and 2025, a figure that places Fresno among the higher-exposure mid-size city departments in the PoliceRiskIndex dataset. A September 2019 public records investigation by ABC30 Action News revealed that the city paid nearly $17.7 million to close claims against the police from 2010 through mid-2019 - an average of approximately $1.8 million per year. The investigation prompted Fresno City Council Member Miguel Arias to warn that the city was on track to declare a fiscal emergency if settlement costs continued at the prevailing rate. The city subsequently doubled its police liability budget to $4 million annually.

The largest single settlement in the Fresno dataset is the $4.4 million Casimero Casillas case, resolved in 2021 after a federal jury had originally awarded $4.75 million in 2019. Casillas, a 45-year-old man, was fatally shot by Fresno police in 2015. The city appealed the jury verdict and ultimately agreed to a $4.4 million settlement. The second-largest case is the $2.8 million Dylan Noble settlement, approved by the Fresno City Council in August 2018. Noble, a 19-year-old, was shot and killed by Fresno officers in 2016 during a traffic stop. The Noble settlement included a training mandate requiring officers to complete specific instruction on high-risk traffic stops - a reform that the city's interim police chief acknowledged had not previously been implemented.

Subsequent cases have continued the settlement trajectory. In 2022, the city settled the London Wallace excessive force lawsuit for $500,000. Wallace, a teenager, was punched multiple times by Officers Christopher Martinez and Ricardo Loza, with body camera footage documenting the incident. In 2023, the city paid $1 million to the family of Oliver Hernandez Jr. in a wrongful death case. In 2025, the family of Christopher Walker - a father struck and killed by an on-duty Fresno police officer - received a $3.25 million settlement, with Officer David Walker identified as the driver.

Fresno is classified as a Non–Consent Decree Dataset in the PoliceRiskIndex system. California's Public Records Act (CPRA) provides strong access to settlement records, and California Senate Bill 1421 (2019) opened additional officer personnel records to public disclosure. For insurance underwriters, the Fresno dataset presents a pattern of consistent annual settlement activity punctuated by high-severity outlier cases - a profile that actuarial models should weight toward tail-risk scenarios rather than mean-reversion assumptions.