Last week it was announced that Francine Kerridge was selected as the first director for the new Long Beach Office of Police Oversight. The new Office of Police Oversight that with the new Police Oversight Commission is replacing the Long Beach Citizens Police Complaint Commission after the passage of Long Beach Measure E.
Local media reported Kerridge’s appointment including the general background information from the city’s press release, including her similar positions in Sacramento, first as the Deputy Director and then 2008 as the Director of Public Safety Accountability for the City of Sacramento, and then in 2022 she was appointed to the County of Sacramento Sherriff Office Inspector General.
Other reporting from Sacramento (see links below) offer a close look and insight into Francine Kerridge and her career.
However, it is a 2016 Sacramento Bee article, Sacramento Police Accountability Falls on Former Cop Who Rose From Poverty, that highlights the life story of Kerridge (who then was known as Francine Tournour) that really shows who Long Beach selected for the new position.
Both Tournour and Kerridge are married names. According to the Sacramento Bee then Francine Tournour married then Roseville City Manager Ray Kerridge:
“In 2013, she [Tournour] married Ray Kerridge, the former city manager of Sacramento and later of Roseville. It was an “Oscar and Felix” relationship that lasted only three years, though Tournour said they remain ‘the best of friends.’ ”
As the Sacramento Bee title says, the article traces Kerridge’s path from how poverty and her early life led her to law enforcement. From her bi-racial background and childhood poverty as the youngest in a large family, to her educational drive and her law enforcement career, the article also reports on Kerridge dealing with her first on-the-job introduction to police corruption:
“Tournour decided she wanted to be on patrol instead of in corrections and was sponsored by the city of Danville, she said. But she quickly ran into trouble with her first training officer. That officer told her to falsify reports, she said.
“Some of the things we were doing didn’t feel right,” she said. “How we were writing reports. … I’m like, ‘That’s not the way it happened.’ His response was, ‘Well, this makes it a stronger case, so this is how we are going to do it.’ ”
Tournour said she took the issue to internal affairs.
“It kind of like blackballed me,” she said of the resulting investigation. “I still knew it was the right thing to do, so I’ve never regretted it.”
Other reporting from Sacramento (see links below) offers a close look and insight into Francine Kerridge and her career.
Francine Kerridge public resumes report that she graduated from Madonna University in Michigan with a Bachelor of Science, Criminal Justice in 1996. While employed with the City of Sacramento, Kerridge’s received her Master of Science, Masters, Emergency Management from California State University Long Beach (2007 – 2009).
For more information
Comments / 1