1 year ago
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KINGS COUNTY, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - The Hanford Police Department has announced its withdrawal from the Kings County Major Crimes Task Force.
Tuesday region leaders and residents shared some enactment and disapproval astatine the Kings County Board of Supervisors meeting. Now the supervisors are drafting a missive that volition beryllium delivered to the Hanford City Council.
This each started past period erstwhile Hanford Police Chief Stephanie Huddleston informed the Kings County Major Crimes Task Force astir their departure.
Huddleston shared with YourCentralValley that gang-related enactment successful Hanford is lone getting worse and she believes it's clip to effort a caller attack to trim transgression wrong the city.
"We've been precise busy," she said.
In 2023, the constabulary section created a full-time Street Crimes Unit consisting of 5 investigators.
"Right present they're truly focusing connected seizing guns, making contacts. We've changed our absorption to doing thoroughfare enforcement," Huddleston added.
In caller years, Huddleston believes the county-wide task unit has shifted distant from thoroughfare enforcement and present operates much arsenic a surveillance unit.
But those were not her lone concerns. Huddleston said having investigators dispersed passim the region often near her unaware of what they were moving on, oregon wherever they were.
"It's astir bringing our resources backmost present to the metropolis and focusing connected our problem," she explained.
In conscionable 1 year, Huddleston says the metropolis paid $104,000 successful overtime to person a Hanford serviceman assigned to the county's task force.
"It brought the disbursal of that serviceman staying successful large crimes to $300,000," she shared.
Despite not having a Hanford typical successful the county-wide task unit for the past 10 months, the chief's announcement has not precisely been met with unfastened arms.
Kings County District Attorney Sarah Hacker is among those who powerfully reason the decision. She calls the Hanford Street Crimes Unit "untested" and "unqualified." Instead, she believes determination needs to beryllium a unified approach, with each agencies moving together.
"The uniqueness of this occupation is that we person pack members from 1 country of the region that volition spell to different area, the region perpetrate a transgression and past instrumentality to wherever they're from, and past you'll person different pack subordinate from that country to retaliate against the archetypal action," Hacker said.
Huddleston assures that determination volition inactive beryllium a enactment of wide connection with the region and that Hanford PD volition stay progressive successful large-scale operations.
