Salinas swears in first female Police Chief

It was standing room only at the ceremony Friday evening. Officers along the peninsula came to welcome Chief Adele Frese, a moment city leaders consider historical.

“It’s really significant. The chief actually will be the 22nd Chief of Police of Salinas, and the first woman Police Chief ever in our city,” City Manager Ray Corpus said.

“I’m getting teary. I admire her because she has been through so many triumphs and challenges, and particularly for young women and girls to have someone to look up to,” State Controller Betty Yee said.

Also a close family friend, Yee fought through Friday’s traffic from Palo Alto to bear witness.

“Anytime I see women ascending in leadership, and particularly in a field and in a discipline like law enforcement, you have to be moved because it is a tremendous sacrifice, particularly in this role,” Yee said.

And the state has high expectations.

“We really would love to see economic vitality here in the city of Salinas and much of that is really about businesses feeling secure about being here,” Yee said.

“I can’t downplay what it means to have 40 homicides, 30, you know, in the 30s, that is way high a city our size. So we are serious about preventing crime,” Frese said.

Crime prevention, Chief Frese said, begins with filling the 40 open positions in the department

“That’s something I’m monitoring very closely, and we are going to come to the table, and we are going to discuss all the different possibilities that we haven’t tried, that might exist,” Frese said.

Some of those possibilities include having more seminars, better advertising and reaching out to markets beyond the Salinas valley.