Tower District residents report surge in police traffic stops, raise concerns

A growing number of Tower District residents say ordinary drives through central Fresno now carry a new risk: getting stopped by police for something as small as a headlight, a seatbelt or a rolling stop. That unease has pushed neighbors in Tower and nearby Van Ness Village to organize monthly headlight-replacement events through the Golden Peach Resistance, a community effort aimed at reducing traffic stops that residents see as intrusive and disruptive.

The concern lands in a neighborhood already struggling with questions about safety, enforcement and quality of life. Tower District sits inside the Fresno Police Department’s Central Policing District, which the city says serves a diverse area that includes the historic neighborhood. But residents say the increased attention on traffic enforcement has changed the feel of the area without clearly solving the problems people most want addressed.

Lee Townsend, a longtime Tower District resident, said he was stopped twice in the same week earlier this year, once for a seatbelt violation and once for not fully stopping at a stop sign. His experience has become part of a broader conversation among neighbors who say the stops are not just about enforcing traffic laws, but about how often and why officers are pulling people over in the first place.

The numbers help explain why the debate has sharpened. Fresno Police Department officers stopped people 32,028 times in 2024, according to stop data reported to the state. The state reporting system exists because the Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 required law enforcement agencies to document stop data. A 2025 report by Catalyst California and Fresno Building Healthy Communities, Driven by Bias: An Analysis of Police Stops in Fresno, said the department uses racially biased traffic stops to profile people of color and spends the majority of patrol time on traffic stops.

Disparities in those stops have also drawn scrutiny. The San Francisco Chronicle found Fresno police were 2.1 times more likely to stop Black people than white people, based on stops per 10,000 residents. That finding has added weight to concerns from Tower District residents who say routine enforcement can land unevenly across the community.

The issue has spilled into city politics as well. Fresno Councilmember Annalisa Perea has urged residents to report crimes so the city can direct resources where they are needed most, a reminder that the fight over traffic stops sits alongside broader concerns about public safety. In Tower District, where business owners and residents have already described boarded-up buildings, fortified storefronts and rising unease, the question is whether more stops are making the neighborhood safer or simply reshaping daily life without clear results.