Verified Response  9/5/7
David Tuthill

In last Tuesday?s (Aug. 27th 2007) Letters to the Editor, The Dallas Morning News ran a letter from Carrie Spadling ?Security should be first?.  She tells of her family?s Dallas business being broken into.  After her parents verified that indeed the alarm was due to an actual break-in, they waited for the police for over an hour and a half to arrive and investigate.  Finally, after no response, they called the police up to tell them not to bother!  There was no reason for the police to hurry to the scene of the crime as the perpetrators had sufficient time to get away.

Last spring, I was at a local grocery store picking up just a few items one early Saturday afternoon.  When I came out, I observed someone in my car.  I shouted at them, and they bailed out into a waiting get a way car and sped off.  I started to chase them on foot and managed to get the license plate number and a description of the car.  I, too, waited for over an hour and a half for police response and then a tow truck.  While the perpetrator failed to hot wire my car, he sufficiently made a mess of my key ignition to require it to be towed away for repair.  After taking my information on the get away car, the responding officers proceeded to ?patrol the area on the look out for the get away car?.  In all probability, the perpetrators had a sufficient time to get away from the area if not the metroplex.  No follow up was provided to me on the information I provided on the get a way car.

Another acquaintance told me of spotting his stolen car and calling the police to retrieve it.  He was advised to let it go and not to pursue his property.  I guess he should just rake it up as a loss even though he found it being operated by a criminal.

I am continually impressed with the city?s ?Verified Response? that requires business owners to be the first responders when a crime occurs.  Perhaps they might be lucky and confront an armed criminal and get to deal with that, too!

What message does this send to businesses that might want to operate in Dallas?  That Dallas is not very business friendly.

No wonder that Dallas has one of the highest crime rates in the country.  To think that last year's city council wanted this vacuous policy for residential alarms, too!

This makes me wonder what the Police actually do?