Shame on Fresno PD for mishandling report of a white principal striking a Black student

It took Fresno police three months to bring a case against a former white male principal in the Fresno Unified School District who is shown on a video hitting a Black boy.

Police Chief Paco Balderrama blamed “system failures” within the department for the delay. That, frankly, is unacceptable.

The news spread quickly Thursday after The Bee’s Juliana Morano broke the story about the altercation. It involved the former principal of Wolters Elementary, Brian Vollhardt, and a Black boy, a special needs student, who had come up to speak with him.

A video of the incident, shared during a FUSD news conference Thursday morning, shows the boy step up to Vollhardt and appear to get into a discussion. The youth’s face is blurred since he is a juvenile, and The Bee is understandably not identifying him.

At one point, the boy begins to walk away, as do two other staff. The youth then comes back to Vollhardt again and looks to be talking. At that point, the principal shoves the boy down. There is no sound on the video, which was taken by a security camera.

Opinion

The altercation took place on June 7, with the school year set to end three days later. Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson said that the following day Vollhardt was put on administrative leave. On June 9, the district’s human resources office reported the incident to police and county child protective services.

Nelson said disciplinary action then began, and it was during that process that Vollhardt resigned. He has since regained employment, this time as vice principal of Tranquillity High on Fresno County’s westside. On Thursday, he was placed on leave from that post.

“While there has been zero information to lead us to believe that this was a racially motivated altercation, we are not blind to the fact racial dynamics are always present,” Nelson said. He added district support services were available to help any Black students or staff who may be upset by the video or news of the incident.

Nelson stressed the district does not tolerate aggressive, physical altercations between staff and students: “There is no excuse for repugnant behavior such as this … such conduct absolutely will not to be tolerated at any level within Fresno Unified.”

But it was during the investigation into the June 7 incident that Fresno Unified administrators learned Vollhardt had a run-in with the same boy on May 27. In that incident, the principal refused to let the child leave a classroom, and ultimately forced him to the floor and put a knee on his back while holding down the student’s shoulder for “approximately 2-4 minutes.”

How this incident did not become known sooner by the district office is also a worrisome question.

Police Department’s slow response

Lt. Bill Dooley of Fresno PD told Morano a report and the video evidence on the June 7 altercation were put into the department’s system on June 13.

But an arrest warrant was not issued until just Wednesday, three months to the day of the altercation.

It is good that both the school district and District Attorney’s Office acted with haste to bring a case against Vollhardt.

But that puts the Police Department’s slow response in even greater contrast.

In an email to The Bee, Balderrama said he was not told about the June 7 report when it came in to this department. Then, it somehow got categorized as “suspended.”

“This particular case should never have been categorized as suspended and should have been assigned to a detective immediately,” Balderrama said in the email.

He added that the PD and FUSD both need to do better at informing each agency about major incidents.

As it is, once Morano began asking questions about the incident in June, police found the report and hustled to work the case.

That is little comfort, however, to residents who depend on their police to swiftly seek justice on the reports presented to them.

In addition to his explanation, Balderrama owes Fresno residents, and especially its Black community, an apology for this breakdown in process. If it took this long to get the PD focused on what seems to be an obvious case, can citizens have confidence in its work on more complicated crimes?