Dallas City Council repeals police staffing standard to avoid lawsuit
DALLAS - The Dallas City Council made a change to a 36-year-old city ordinance that set a police staffing standard in an effort to prevent a lawsuit.
The 1988 policy called for Dallas to have three police officers for every 1,000 residents.
The Dallas Police Department currently does not have enough officers to meet that standard.
After a two hour-long executive session, the council voted 8-2 to repeal the old ordinance, with Councilman Jesse Moreno and Mayor Eric Johnson voting no. Five council members were also absent.
Last week, voters approved more than a dozen amendments to the city’s charter, including two that were added by the nonprofit organization Dallas HERO after collecting enough signatures on a petition.
One of them allows residents to sue the city for violating its own ordinances, such as that 1988 police staffing standard, as well as state laws.
"Today’s reckless and spiteful decision by the city council only demonstrated their total lack of professionalism and research, and egotistical grudge against the people’s express will. Once again, the city council has abused executive session instead of deliberating an important subject before the people, but the people still prevailed in the right to sue for violations of the law," said Dallas HERO Executive Director Pete Marocco. "It wasn’t appropriately brought to vote, added to the agenda in the dead of the night and five cowardly members of city council were absent. Dallas’s city council continues to push their own political agendas instead of representing the very people who elected them to serve."
Dallas HERO Amendments: Props S, U passed
Former and current Dallas city leaders warned that the so-called HERO amendments sound good but could have disastrous results. However, voters approved two of them anyway.
Another voter-approved amendment requires the Dallas Police Department to "increase the number of police officers to a minimum of 4,000, and to maintain that ratio of officers to the City of Dallas population."
The current force is about 900 police officers short of the 4,000 minimum.
Even with the 1988 ordinance gone, it seems the police department will still be held to a minimum standard because of this new amendment.