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Harry Trujillo
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9/07/07 Is City Council
taking a lesson from the Commissioners Court?
When the Commissioners screwed
up and took away the $69K exemption for Senior taxpayers over 65, they caught
Holy Hell from their constituents. Unlike most elected officials, all 5
commissioners voted to correct their mistake.
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When the city council voted to institute the
verified response procedure regarding burglar alarms, they wisely
limited the misguided plan to businesses. That spared them the
kind of overwhelming negative reaction that hit the Commissioners Court
in August. People get the most agitated when something impacts
them directly. When it's someone else who is being wronged, most
of us get busy doing something else. |
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9/6
Betty Culbreath:
When I drove into my drive and saw my front door standing open, I
called 911. I told them a burglar
must be in my house because the door was
open. I waited an
hour in my drive for the police to arrive.
I finally asked myself,
'What kind of fool am I sitting out here
like this? If someone
was in there,
they would be out or gone through the
back. I called 911 back to cancel
my call because my neighbor was going into
the house to check it. The operator told me
to wait for the police.
I said, "Lady,
as nice as you are, I cannot wait another
hour out here. It's dark now."
We have a problem. From what
I read in the DMN
that an unnamed police supervisor complained
about some council people doing their job
is part of it. I do not think for a
minute Chief Kunkle or Brown share that view. A request for service
for a community concern is valid reason
for any council member to forward a
request through proper chain of command.
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Can you imagine owning a small
business and knowing that after you leave, the Dallas Police Department will not
be protecting your property? What would you do if you got a call from an
alarm company at 2:00 a.m. saying your alarm was going off at your business?
Rush right over to confront the intruder? Right!
Business owners who can afford it, have had to pay for their own police.
They are already paying for police protection with their city taxes. For
them, verified response actually is a double tax. Sort of like
Dallas citizens who have to pay DISD taxes but have to put their children in
private schools so they can get an education, because the DISD can't/won't do
its job.
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Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and Police Chief David Kunkle clashed Wednesday on whether the city should repeal its "verified response" burglar-alarm policy.
City Council members, meanwhile, appeared generally split on whether to reaffirm or repeal the policy, which requires business owners to confirm independently that a break-in has occurred before police officers will investigate – either by using private security guards or driving to their businesses themselves.
Wednesday's debate among council members foreshadowed a formal verified-response vote, which the council is expected to hold Wednesday.
"In my opinion, the program has generally worked the way we have anticipated it. I don't know of any increase in crime that can be attributed to verified response," Chief Kunkle told the council.
"It's the wrong policy from the pocketbooks of the people of Dallas," Mr. Leppert said. "I think it's the wrong policy in sending a message of where we're going to go in the future. And I think it's clearly the wrong message in how we're talking to our citizens and what the role of the police department is in protecting them." ...
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Dave Levinthal really does a
good job reporting the debate. With the caveat that David Kunkle and his
lovely Mrs. are personal friends of mine, I thought Mayor Leppert bordered on
disrespectful and rude toward our wonderful Chief of Police. That said,
I agree with Mayor Leppert that verified response was a bad idea from the
get go.
Verified response came out of the Productivity Commission also known as the
Waste of Time Commission. This is the same panel that keeps trying to sell
WRR, among other hair brain ideas. The Chair of the Productivity
Commission has been going way beyond his authority by recruiting speakers to
address the council in support of verified response. If you
want verified response to go away, you need to call the City
Secretary's Office (214)
670-3738)
to sign up as a speaker on Friday.
You may not think this affects you, but it could in the future. If a
business can't afford to employ its own police officers to protect its property,
that business is likely to leave the city. That could impact you in all
sorts of ways: loss of that retail or service store; increased property
taxes because the exiting business will be paying taxes and generating sales tax
revenue in another city. Worse, the council could still impose verified
response on homeowners, too.
There are a couple of council members sitting on the fence on this matter.
You might be able to push them over to our side and get them to vote in favor of
repealing verified response.
If you can't get off work to go to City Hall, call your council representative
and ask them to vote to repeal verified response.
Hey, we got the Commissioners to come around.
sb
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