This week’s Citizens Academy met at the City of Madera Police Department to get an inside look at what it takes for Madera PD to make sure the city stays safe.
During the presentation led by Chief Gino Chiaramonte and Commander Josiah Arnold, Citizens Academy class members learned about the ins and outs of the Madera Police Department. The presentation started with the department’s mission, which is to be devoted to family and community through superior service and partnerships.
“Our one goal is to reduce crime, but it’s how you reduce crime,” Chiaramonte explained. “It’s how you treat them while you’re reducing crime. We want to treat them with dignity and respect.”
The Madera Police Department is made up of 114 employees, including 76 police officers, 38 professional staff members, and three dogs. There are three divisions that the chief of police and each of the commanders oversee: Operations, Investigations and Administration.
The Operations Division consists of patrol officers, the traffic unit and school resource officers. The Investigations Division consists of investigations, detectives, the Special Investigation Unit and code enforcement. Lastly, the Administration Division handles dispatch, records, property, evidence and animal control.
Chief Chiaramonte explained that a lot of his job consists of community relations and the department’s public-facing operations. He can be seen at City Council meetings, town halls, working alongside the school district and participating in other public duties. Meanwhile, the second-in-command oversees the internal daily operations of the police department.
One notable topic Chief Chiaramonte discussed was how crime has drastically decreased in the community. Throughout the last three years, violent crime, consisting of homicide, robbery, rape, domestic violence and assault, went down 8.7 percent. Property crime, consisting of vehicle theft, burglary, larceny, petty theft and retail theft, went down 31.2 percent,. Lastly, overall crime went down 9 percent.
“When we look at social media and how people communicate, our brains immediately go negative,” Chiaramonte said. “But, our community is doing really well.”
A big contributor to the decrease in crime is the increase in police proactivity, more officers patrolling the community, the removal of firearms from the streets, special investigations targeting gang activity and community partnerships.
Chief Chiaramonte broke down statistics from 2025, noting that there were a total of 65,715 events throughout the year. This included 2,049 welfare checks, 1,680 burglar alarms, 1,686 stray animal calls, 3,111 requests for non-emergency assistance, 73 dog bites, 719 cases handled by detectives and 247 driving under the influence arrests.
He also mentioned that many calls are simply people asking officers to check on family members, missing people or intoxicated homeless who need to be checked on to make sure they are doing well. Of all burglar alarms, about 95 percent to 99 percent of calls are false alarms.
“We have this slogan throughout our community that no call is too small,” Chiaramonte said. “We try to handle and solve a lot of our communities problems, even though they may not be criminal in nature.”
During the budget portion of the presentation, Chief Chiaramonte explained that the entire police department has a budget of $18.87 million, which is split between the General Fund and Measure K.
Of the $18.87 million, $4.8 million goes toward operations, which covers cars, radios, guns, PG&E and other necessities to help the department running. The remaining $14.2 million covers personnel, with $7.4 million going toward staff salaries and $6.9 million covering benefits such as health care and retirement.
When it comes to school resource officers, Madera Unified School District fully funds all three officers who are assigned to school sites. The Madera Housing Authority also funds an additional officer.
The Madera Police Department patrols the city in four different areas, with four different patrol shifts running at any given time. The four areas consist of Beat 1, Southwest Madera; Beat 2, Northeast Madera; Beat 3, Northwest Madera; and Beat 4, Southwest Madera.
Officers are assigned to the same beat for six-month periods to allow them to become familiar with the neighborhoods and communities they serve. Their schedules are split into four shifts weekday days, weekday nights, weekend days and weekend nights, with shifts lasting anywhere from 12 to 16 hours.
In 2025, officers made 5,594 arrests, conducted 11,056 traffic stops and responded to 29,170 self-initiated calls.
The traffic division focuses on four areas school zones, speeding, impaired driving and right-of-way cases. In 2025, the division responded to 567 collisions, including four fatal collisions, issued 3,517 traffic citations and made 247 driving under the influence arrests.
The City of Madera is unique in the sense that it operates its own dispatch center. The dispatch team consists of a supervisor and 11 dispatchers. At any given time, there are at least two dispatchers working each shift, with one taking calls and the other relaying information to officers so they can do their jobs.
Madera’s dispatch center handles all calls within the city’s jurisdiction, covering police as well as medical and fire services. Medical calls are forwarded to American Ambulance, while fire calls go to Cal Fire. Dispatchers are also responsible for handling calls involving officers, code enforcement and animal control.
“Our role is pretty important because there’s a whole lot of trust that our officers have in us to ask important questions, collect important information and provide that information to them over the radio so that the responding units can go into a situation, a call for service, knowing, hey, this is essentially kind of what’s going on,” a Madera PD dispatcher explained.
The Investigations Division handled 719 cases in 2025. The unit is staffed by one sergeant and six detectives, with each detective covering a primary focus, such as violent crime, sex crimes, crimes against children and the elderly, property crime and fraud.
The Special Investigation Unit is a multi-jurisdictional team that works with the Madera County Sheriff’s Department, Chowchilla Police Department, Probation Department and District Attorney’s Office. The team focuses on drug sales, illegal firearm sales, prostitution and other vice-related offenses.
The last topic covered in the presentation was animal control. In 2025, the department answered 4,211 calls for service. Of those calls, 1,683 were for stray animals, 851 for deceased animals, 417 for injured animals and 73 for dog bites.
While the Madera Police Department wants to respond to each call involving stray animals, the locations where officers take the animals are currently full. The Madera Animal Shelter is also at full capacity, limiting its ability to take in additional stray dogs.
“We have the staffing and capability of catching every stray animal, but we don’t have a location for them,” Chief Chiaramonte explained. “All of our volunteers that take one and house these animals outside of the shelter are all done, they’re hands up saying, ‘we are full.’”
The final Citizen’s Academy will be held next week, and cover engineering and future projects to come to Madera.