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Joe Martin
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09/13/04 DPD on the Right Path -- at
last.
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When the $485,000 Berkshire report came out,
there was a lot of hubbub, but what was news in it?
Did you attend any of their community meetings? I did!
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The one I attended was dominated by a Park Cities guy who kept talking about
how often he talks with Mayor Miller and other big shots.
How would he feel about one of us crashing a Park Cities town hall meeting?
It was a real waste of time for all concerned, except the Park Cities guy.
We spent nearly half a million dollars on a report that only confirms what we
already knew and recommends steps that our great new Police Chief Kunkle and
Interim Chief Hampton have already started. |
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Officer P:
Normally I agree with just about everything you post on your
website. If you think DPD is on the right
track, you have lost your mind. If the
Mayor thinks morale has gone up since Kunkle took over,
she's a complete idiot.
Start speaking to patrol officers and
see if anything has changed in their world.
You could also bulldoze all of Deep
Ellum, and it would not change the crime rate in
Dallas.
It
is a lot easier to pay attention sitting in the front of one of those patrol
cars you are speaking about, but I wouldn't know anything about that.
Like I
said, speak with some officers, and you might find morale is not up
and many of us think we are no better off now than we were with
Bolton.
Why don't you find out if those
officers that were involved in the fight with that
300 lb thug are still sitting behind desks?
Morale is not up, crime is not going
down, and people wonder why?
If you want to help DPD
officers, get the real word out.
Editor's comments: Baby steps in the right
direction are better than Bolton's elephant walk
the wrong way. It will take a long time to undo it all. |
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We had sorry leadership in the DPD. As soon
as Interim Chief Hampton replaced Bolton, things started improving.
When Chief Kunkle was named as the permanent Chief of Police, the sound of
relief was so loud among the rank and file you could hear it city wide.
Ted Benavides could have given us another moron like Bolton, but he did the
right thing in selecting Chief Kunkle. |
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We had no plan for the DPD. Interim Chief
Hampton started reorganizing and reprioritizing. Chief Kunkle not only
has a plan, he has DPD experience from when the Department was one of the
best in the USA. He also had his successes in Arlington to confirm his
theories. |
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We had officers consumed with cynicism about
their leaders, promotions and transfers and council decisions. Most
rank and file were so relieved to see Bolton out showing the world what they
already knew about him that they were satisfied just to see him go.
Still, they were having to work with Bolton hires, some of whom had bad acts
in their history or could not meet former DPD standards.
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We had Terrell Bolton and the morons he kept
around him, who hired people with questionable backgrounds as Dallas Police
recruits. We have a new Chief who is keeping the commanders we need
and has moved some particularly inept commanders back to their former rank. |
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We needed more police officers on the street.
We are hiring now. Chief Kunkle is returning the DPD to beat policing
to more effectively use the officers we have and to train our new recruits. |
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We needed better squad cars and equipment.
It will take a while to get that accomplished. We should never forget
that while street cops were driving cars that were too old and not well
maintained, Bolton had his PR team driving new squad cars. |
I am very encouraged about the
future of the DPD and our personal safety under Chief Kunkle. I also have
to admit to being very impressed with how well Interim Chief Hampton performed.
Hampton worked with the Mayor. Hampton conducted himself with decorum.
Interim Chief Hampton acted like a Chief of Police, not the class clown act we
had with Terrell Bolton.
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Leadership faulted
for DPD problems;
Efficiency
study advises reshuffling department, which 'has lost its way'
Saturday,
September 11, 2004
By EMILY RAMSHAW and TANYA EISERER / The Dallas Morning News |
... Senior Cpl. Glenn White, president of the
Dallas Police Association, said the report confirms many of the problems
officers have complained about for years.
"They could have come and talked to
us and done it for free," he said. "I think there will be a whole bunch of
hoopla in the media, and probably in four or five months people will forget
that it was ever done."
Chief Kunkle hopes not. He said the
next step is to form a committee to "work through each of the
recommendations."
"We will make decisions whether we
implement the recommendation or not," he said. "This is a department that
can provide service at a higher level. There is tremendous support for the
Dallas Police Department in this city and a desire for the department to be
respected." |
Occasionally, Glenn White has
to be right about something. What this very expensive report does is force
those on the council who don't want a strong DPD (and you know who they are by
their votes and statements) to cooperate with Chief Kunkle to implement his
plans which are absolutely in line with the recommendations of this $485,000
study.
We have more good news for the city. Our Mayor and Police Chief are facing
the reality of the problems related to after-hours clubs in our entertainment
districts.
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Mayor, police chief
seeking Deep Ellum crime solutions;
Officials want after-hours clubs
to close at 2 a.m.
September
10, 2004
By JASON TRAHAN and EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News |
The mayor and police chief are urging
Deep Ellum after-hours clubs to shut down at 2 a.m. to curb what they say is
a late-night crime problem plaguing the entertainment district.
... "It's an issue of public perception in Deep
Ellum," Chief Kunkle said after his monthly crime meeting earlier in the day
with Mayor Laura Miller.
... The chief said "more significant" crimes occur
after 2 a.m.
"Incidents are not happening in the
clubs themselves," he said. "But they are attracting traffic in the
after-hours. These complaints are not new. ..."
Mark McNabb, executive director of
the Deep Ellum Association, said he didn't think his group could support
such a proposal.
... A year ago, police brass asked the council's
Public Safety Committee to do away with after-hours permits, which would
have forced two dozen or so clubs that stay open until 4 a.m. to close two
hours earlier. In lieu of that, police asked that after-hours clubs be
required to hire at least two security guards for that time period.
Council members
declined to act, saying that to force clubs to close at 2 a.m. would trample
on the city's cosmopolitan image.
... Ms. Miller said Friday that she is ready to
revisit the issue,
"Police say from 2 to 4 a.m. they're baby-sitting a lot of kids," she said.
"If you look at just shootings, they're almost all at 2 and 3 in the
morning. I don't think it's worth it anymore to have that place open at 3 in
the morning."
... she said. "We have 10,000 young people who
descend on Deep Ellum on a Saturday night. Something else needs to happen
there to give people a level of confidence."
Police have said that after-hours
clubs are a drain on police resources and magnets for troublemakers.
... One of the most notorious after-hours clubs in
the city is Club Suavemente in the 1800 block of West Mockingbird Lane,
several miles from Deep Ellum. Since 2001, five killings have been connected
with the club. ... |
One Saturday night last year, I
was out at 4 am returning from the Emergency Vet after having to put to sleep a
19 year old cat who picked a Saturday night at Midnight to have a stroke and
seizures. I could not believe the street traffic.
| It makes no sense to divert our understaffed police officers from protecting our
neighborhoods when night clubs are creating crisis situations every weekend out
of greed and with complete disregard for the good of the entire city.
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Dylan Cave:
I just have to laugh about the city council
comment about clubs closing 2 hours early trampling our
"cosmopolitan image".
Yeah, Dallas is cosmo --
right up there with @&!# - holes like Detroit.
Just another example of the false
reality those housewives and morons live in. |
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Will we ever have a city council where substance means more than
image?
| It was Sandy Greyson who represents the very wealthy Far North Dallas area that
was concerned about our "cosmopolitan image". I guarantee you her
constituents would raise a holy fit if hordes of out of town under age drunks
were invading her district and attracting all the chaos that comes with them.
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James Northrup:
Cosmo Image? After-hours
not worth it in terms of sales tax vs loss of life
and property.
Cost/benefit probably actually peaks
before midnight in most club districts.
After that, a net cost to the City,
Parkland, insurance rates.
After 2 AM, a real money losing
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We need to support the Mayor and Police Chief this effort.
We have substantial reduction in crime.
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For year, Dallas
crime falls 5%;
Dallas police chief concerned with
spike in August of 21 slayings
September 11, 2004
By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News
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Crime, including slayings, continued to
decline during the first eight months of this year, but the Dallas police
chief says he's concerned about a spike this past month.
There were 21 people slain in Dallas
last month, compared to 17 in August 2003, or a 23 percent increase,
according to the newest complete statistics released by the Police
Department Friday.
But comparing
the first eight months of this year to the same period last year, slayings
are down 8 percent.
... Still, Police Chief David Kunkle said
he's alarmed by the August spike, adding that there have been 30 killings in
the last 34 days.
"We were down through the month of
July, and then we had a miserable month of August," Chief Kunkle said. "It's
difficult from our perspective, because there are no patterns. You can't
arrest your way out of a crime problem." ...
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Murder is hard to predict or
prevent. The poor guy who was buying gas on Mockingbird and didn't have a
bunch of cash in his pockets -- what precautions would have kept that soulless
monster from shooting him?
We know night clubs that stay open after 2 am attract problematic people --
people who are either under age or drunk or both. Then there's all those
really bad guys who hang out near those after-hour clubs to prey on the under
age drunks, as well as those drunks who are old enough to know better.
We need to get our city cleaned up and stop making things convenient for people
to get in trouble. For every tax dollar we make on the after-hour clubs,
we spend $5 or more providing police protection for their patrons who ought to
be in bed somewhere at 4 AM. All the violence that occurs between 2-4 AM
certainly is not great for our city's "cosmopolitan image". We might not
be the Nation's #1 crime city if we eliminated this window of opportunity for
the bad guys.
Chief Kunkle and Our Mayor are right on this one.
sb
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