The Dallas City Council could vote to remove parts of a 1988 ordinance that created a resident-to-police officer ratio. The item on Wednesday’s council agenda comes after two controversial charter amendments passed narrowly on election night that leaves the city more vulnerable to lawsuits — and creates police hiring mandates.
Propositions S allows Dallas residents to sue the city for violating the charter, local ordinances, or state law. Under the amendment, the city must waive its governmental immunity.
The 1988 ordinance included a set of proposals from the city manager to improve the police department. One proposal was a series of police staffing increases.
“The city manager will increase the total number of police officers serving the city by at least 150 per year for each of the next four years and, thereafter, will maintain a ratio of at least three police officers per one thousand citizens,” the ordinance said.
Right now, the city isn't in compliance with that ordinance. The council could vote to remove those previsions, according to a drafted amendment to the ordinance.
KERA reached out to the city on Monday for comment about the draft amendment, what the potential effect would be if it is approved and whether the potential change was in direct response to the passage of Propositions S and U. This story will be updated with any comment from the city.
Wednesday’s agenda item could be a way to avoid being sued under the new charter amendments. Currently, the city is not in compliance with the 1988 ordinance. Under Proposition S, that means after a 60-day notice, a resident can sue the city for violating its own ordinances.
But even if the council removes sections of the ordinance — the city could still be left open to a lawsuit if it doesn’t comply with the new hiring mandates created by Proposition U.
“Dallas currently has fewer than 3,200 officers and officials have said reaching 4,000 officers would cost at least a few hundred million dollars and likely take many years,” Scott Goldstein, the communications consultant for Downtown Dallas Inc, wrote in his Sunday “meetings of interest” newsletter.
“Major city police departments across the country are struggling to recruit officers and it takes about a year-and-a-half for recruits to go through the academy and training before they can hit the streets on their own.”
Goldstein, who had a hand in a vocal opposition campaign launched just weeks from election day, said the scheduled council item is a “preemptive strike.”
‘Not following the law’
The propositions were placed on the ballot by a group called Dallas HERO. Pete Marocco, the group's executive director, told KERA in a mid-October interview about the 1988 ordinance.
City officials have previously said trying to hire hundreds more officers isn't an easy task — and it could cost the city millions trying to pull it off. Marocco said its already been done before.
“The city is required to maintain it,” Marocco said. “I can be done, and it can be done responsibly.”
During a late-October interview with CBS Texas’ Jack Fink, Marocco cited the same ordinance as an example of council members “not following the law.”
Following the 1988 ordinance would mean staffing nearly 4,000 officers — the number mandated in Dallas HERO’s other amendment, Proposition U.
The group was the subject of intense scrutiny over its funders and real reason for launching the effort. In then weeks — and days — leading up to election day, more information surfaced about the group.
Marocco lives in University Park, according to a past city council registered speakers list. And one of Dallas HERO’s few public donors, hotelier Monty Bennett, claims a homestead exemption in Highland Park — a wealthy enclave outside of the Dallas city limits.
The day before the election, D Magazine reported Marocco had been accused of entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan 6, 2021 insurrection. Marocco denied those claims in a statement to the magazine.
Bennett, who also serves as the publisher of the Dallas Express, has been accused of using the publication to discredit other media organizations — and promote his own interests, according to a sweeping investigation into the HERO movement published in the Texas Observer.
The coalition that came together to oppose the HERO propositions, which included every living former Dallas mayor and the entire current city council along with former council members, warned the measures could be detrimental to the city.
“This is not taking a sledgehammer to the way we do business,” former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk said during an early-October press conference opposing the items. “This is rolling a hand grenade into City Hall and destroying it.”
‘Wake up call’
But Dallas voters made their voices heard. District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn told KERA after the election that, while she didn’t support the propositions, she hopes their approval serves as a “wake up call” to City Hall.
Other elected officials had a different take.
District 9 Council Member Paula Blackmon told KERA she was “deeply disappointed” that the propositions passed.
“I worry that combined, the fiscal impacts will be crippling and that work at City Hall will be slowed to a halt until we understand the full impacts of these harmful propositions,” Blackmon said in a text the morning after the election.
During the opposition campaign — and in the wake of the amendments approval — questions were raised about Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson’s endorsement. Johnson and Mendelsohn were notably absent from the organized “Vote No” campaign.
Eventually, Mendelsohn and Johnson released an opinion piece not urging voters to oppose just the Dallas HERO propositions — but the entire charter program.
When KERA asked former and current election officials in early October why Johnson, specifically, was not campaigning with the group, many didn’t have answers.
Just days after the election, The Dallas Morning News’ editorial board published an opinion piece titled “This election, Mayor Eric Johnson let Dallas down.”
The editorial board argued Dallas voters may not have been “fully informed about the negative consequences these propositions could have on the function of local government.”
“That is why so many leaders of this city, including people from very different political backgrounds, rushed to come together to oppose the propositions, with our former mayors taking the lead,” the board wrote.
“But where was Eric Johnson?” it added.
Wednesday’s scheduled action is just the start of what could be a long path to incorporating the new charter amendments for the city.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.
