CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Standing Tall in Fresno : The city’s new police chief has defied good ol’ boy traditions, using a personal touch to combat violence in a city that has seen 82 murders this year.

One night last summer outside a posh Fresno restaurant, two men riding tandem on a stolen motorcycle, their faces concealed, tried to snatch the purse of 18-year-old Kimber Reynolds, a freshman at a Los Angeles fashion institute.

Reynolds, who had come home for the weekend, resisted. One man pulled a .357 magnum from his waistband and shot her point-blank in the head. She died 26 hours later.

The next day, Fresno’s new police chief, Joseph Samuels, stood inside the Reynolds home leading the family in prayer. With God’s help, he pledged, his men would find the men responsible.

In a record year for murder here, the killing of Reynolds has not been forgotten. It has become for Fresno what the 1988 murder of Karen Toshima in Westwood Village became for many in Los Angeles--proof that however partitioned a city may be, violence no longer abides social borders.

It was also confirmation that the man at the top, Samuels, a 43-year-old African-American who spent 17 years with the Oakland Police Department, was unlike Fresno police chiefs before him: hands-on, keen to the moment, willing to use the media without seeming exploitative.

In the days that followed, Samuels made good on his promise. When Fresno police gunned down the alleged triggerman in a shootout, the first call Samuels placed was to Mike Reynolds, Kimber’s father.

“I have lived here my entire life and I have never seen a police chief get involved with the community in such a personal way,” Reynolds said. “Whether it’s my daughter or a march against drugs or a meeting with gangbangers, he’s right in there all the time. He’s listening.”

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From the day he assumed the post 13 months ago, Samuels has defied the sacred cows and good ol’ boy traditions of the Fresno Police Department’s 107-year history.

He refuses to hobnob with his men. At 6 foot 4 and 225 pounds, he cuts an imposing figure to go with an expansive vocabulary. Out on the town, he and his wife, who runs a modeling school, make a stunning pair.

But his reign comes at a time of great challenge for Fresno. For Samuels to succeed, city officials say, he will need all the strengths of his personality and intellect and then some.

Only Oakland, Samuels’ last home, is more crime-ridden per capita among big California cities. Every four days, it seems, Fresnans awake to another killing. The 82 murders this year, surpassing a previous high of 69 set in 1990, might sound trifling to Southern Californians. But people here still think of their city, population 400,000, as a raisin town.

“Fresno is going through inevitable growing pains and searching for an identity and future,” Samuels said. “That’s part of the reason I came here. To help shape and define that future.”

Long before growth brought a new kind of crime and a new kind of police chief to Fresno, townsfolk heeded a different ethos.

“Fresno is known all over California as the wickedest spot in the state,” Chester Rowell, editor of the Fresno Morning Republican, groaned in the early 1900s. “Gambling houses running wide open all night and day. A tenderloin equal to that of an Eastern city 10 times our population.”

Old police chiefs schemed with vice lords, milking payoffs to buy huge farms north of town. Federal agents began taking note in 1919, shortly after the resignation of Police Chief John Goehring, brother of future Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering.

Raiding Ku Klux Klan headquarters in Los Angeles, federal agents seized a membership list that named seven Fresno police officers. Then agents busted a bootlegging ring operated by three Italian immigrants and 13 high-ranking police officials, including the new chief.

It was not until 1950, though, that one of Fresno’s finest landed behind bars. Washington columnist Drew Pearson, portraying Fresno as one of the most venal cities in the country, wrote that Ray Wallace had amassed more than 1,700 acres of land while serving as police chief. Wallace got 18 months in federal prison for tax evasion.

Replacing him was former truck driver Hank Morton, whose 21-year reign made him the most powerful man in Fresno County. Morton ended up marrying one of the town’s biggest madams.

“It was a rotten town with a rotten police force,” said Larry Miller, a retired federal agent who busted numerous Fresno bookies with connections to the Police Department in the 1960s. “And the citizens didn’t mind. Their indifference was practically suffocating.”

In the 1970s, three federal organized crime strike forces investigated the Fresno Police Department. No charges ensued, though the last probe led to reorganization of the department and the firing of Chief Harold Britton. The past decade has seen the department shake much of its reputation.

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Samuels, who holds a master’s degree in public administration from Cal State Hayward, knows almost nothing of this history.

Fresno’s 15th police chief says the challenges are too great for him to spend time in the past. The city’s population and girth have doubled. So have the calls to police, the murders, the car thefts, and the Southeast Asian, Latino and black gangbangers.

The one statistic that has not doubled is the number of police officers. In 1980, Fresno boasted 328 sworn personnel. Today, 424 officers keep watch over a city that has grown by 180,000 people. The ratio of cops to residents is one of the lowest in the state.

Samuels wants 400 new officers by 2000. And he wants more money for the youth- and crime-prevention programs he has brought to Fresno. He has taken his case straight to the people and this galls some City Council members who say he is too media savvy and too glib.

“This is a defining moment,” Samuels said, measuring each word. “Public safety is a fundamental obligation and we are not doing all that we need to do.”

Samuels faces challenge from inside as well. Long a bastion of white men born and bred here, the Fresno Police Department never has been more racially divided than it is today, black and white officers agree.

Since Samuels’ arrival, white officers contend, the best posts have gone to minorities. “He looks good and says all the right things but when you get right down to it, he’s practicing reverse discrimination,” said one white sergeant who asked not to be named.

Samuels cites hard figures disputing such charges. He says the rancor created by the few promotions of African-American and Latino officers underscores the racism that has long plagued the department. As late as 1989, three African-American officers had to sue the city to be named sergeant.

“I’m not naive enough to think that all people inside this agency are going to accept change,” he said. “But what I don’t accept and will not tolerate is racial politics.

“Am I committed to addressing racial imbalance and inequities in our work force? Absolutely yes. Am I going to sacrifice merit or the principle of fairness to do so? Absolutely not.”

Mike Reynolds says the answer is fewer criminals, not more cops. “There were 30 police cars two blocks away and it didn’t help my daughter.”

He has met with the governor and attorney general to push a bill that would double and triple prison time for repeat offenders like the triggerman.

“Fresno is still small enough to do something about crime. We need to get the whole community involved. We need to get to these kids before it’s too late. Chief Samuels is doing that.”