Dallas city officials are under pressure from two factions lobbying them on the next police budget: Social justice activists who want them to hack off a large chunk, and a contingent led by the mayor who want it untouched.
But when the roughly $3.8 billion city budget is formally adopted on Wednesday, money for police is expected to be largely intact. And Dallas will fall in line with most other large Texas cities that have rejected loud calls to “defund the police.”
In this spirit, a coalition of Dallas City Council members have revised their previous proposal to cut $7 million in police overtime from the 2020-21 budget. Under the new plan, the savings will be reinvested back into the police department as well as other public safety measures like streetlights.
This comes after Mayor Eric Johnson has tightened the pressure on his colleagues not to cut any money from police during what he calls a violent crime spike. Johnson has taken to the airwaves and social media with his campaign to cut $6 million from “bloated” City Hall salaries instead of the police cuts, which amount to about a quarter of budgeted overtime for the department.
The new amendment is sponsored by council members Adam Bazaldua, Adam Medrano, David Blewett, Paula Blackmon, Chad West, Tennell Atkins and Omar Narvaez.
It redirects the police overtime money into the following areas:
- $3.8 million to hire 95 civilians for the police department so officers can leave desk jobs and return to patrolling the streets.
- $1.5 million for street lighting to deter crime.
- $750,000 to address illegal dumping.
- $600,000 to address drivers of poverty.
- $300,000 for violence interrupters.
Some of those ideas like streetlights and violence interrupters were included in Johnson’s Task Force on Safe Communities. Violence interrupters are described as “credible messengers” from high-crime neighborhoods who try to keep conflicts from “escalating into gun violence.”
The previous version of the amendment, which passed by an 11-3 straw vote earlier this month, proposed to spend the savings from overtime cuts on streetlights, bike lanes, affordable housing, solar panels, arts and culture programs, and other areas. It had also called for adding some civilians to the police department.
Blackmon said Tuesday that she and other council members have heard from residents that they want the $7 million to be spent on public safety.
“Nobody wants to live in unsafe communities, and nobody is defunding anything,” she said. “We need to look at things differently.”
That includes spending for social services like housing and job training programs that will help people leaving prison, she said.
The idea to add more civilian positions to the police department was recommended in an August 2019 report from the consulting firm KPMG that the city hired. Civilian workers are less expensive than sworn officers, who are needed to respond to high-priority calls.
Bazaldua has said more than 1,000 officers are working desk jobs, handling administrative duties in areas such as communications, technology and personnel. The hope is to reverse a trend that began in 2009-10 when a large budget hole from the recession resulted in the council eliminating 135 civilian positions from the police department, according to city staff.
But Johnson said the fact that the overtime cuts remain in the new council amendment “clearly shows this effort is about cutting the police budget for its own sake.” The mayor said it’s not “prudent” to “raid our reserves” down the road if more money is needed for police overtime.
This budget season comes to a close during a tumultuous year in which many American cities, including Dallas, have seen mass demonstrations in the streets, sometimes turning violent, calling for an end to police brutality. At the same time, job losses in North Texas are the highest they’ve been in at least 30 years due to the coronavirus pandemic that’s wrecked the economy.
But Dallas leaders have been squeamish about cutting the police budget. Prior to the council amendments, City Manager T.C. Broadnax proposed spending only a tiny fraction less on police next fiscal year – about $750,000 — out of a half a billion-dollar police budget.
The police department’s roughly $516 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year is about 35% of the city’s general fund and its single biggest expense. And in the fiscal year after that, the department’s budget will grow even larger, according to Broadnax’s projections.
Local activists in Dallas have put forth a counterproposal to cut $200 million from the police budget, but it has gotten no support on the council.
In Houston and San Antonio, city leaders recently passed budgets that contained more money for police, despite loud calls for defunding the police. Austin is the outlier, having voted last month to cut $150 million from its police department, amounting to about a third of the total.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month proposed punishing cities that “defund” the police by pulling their power of annexation. Abbott also has suggested freezing property taxes of cities that defund or dismantle their police departments.
Five former Dallas City Council members sent a letter to the current council, urging them to reconsider cutting police overtime. The letter, addressed on Monday, said the cuts would hurt families, including those in underserved communities who have been affected by violence.
“With a robust investment in the Dallas Police Department, crime fell precipitously for more than a decade," said the letter signed by Mary Poss, Jerry Allen, William Blaydes, Rickey Callahan and Gary Griffith. “And with reform-minded leadership, relations between the community and police improved.”
