Dallas (1080 KRLD) - The mayor of Dallas wants the city's next budget to include funding for 275 additional police officers. Eric Johnson made the request in a memo to City Manager T.C. Broadnax Tuesday.
“Public safety must come first. While we cannot depend on police alone to prevent crime, our officers play a unique role in taking dangerous people — especially repeat offenders — off our streets. Our police department has been strained in recent years by short staffing, which has necessitated substantial police overtime spending. We can and must do better. We need to grow our police force again to meet the demands of our residents and to make our communities safer and stronger," Johnson wrote in a statement.
He says the department has lost a net of 67 officers through turnover. Johnson says budgeting to hire 275 officers in the fiscal year starting October 1 would "effectively reverse the current year’s reduction and begin to grow the department."
"We're going to have what we need when it comes to public safety and public safety partnerships," says Councilwoman Carolyn King Arnold.
King Arnold says Chief Eddie Garcia has worked to build relationships with neighborhoods and focus on community policing.
"We have a pledge by our new chief that he's going to be here for us," she says. "It's so important we just wrap our arms around that concept of neighborhood policing."
In 2020, Dallas had 251 homicides, the most in 16 years. Earlier this month, Garcia said the crime rate in Dallas for 2021 was outpacing 2020.
Johnson says hiring 275 officers would be 125 more than Broadnax had planned for in the next fiscal year. He says that would help the police department grow its force and outpace attrition. A forecast for next year predicts 70 officers will leave.
A complete list of Johnson's public safety priorities:
• Hire 275 new police officers. This is 125 more officers than what your planned fiscal year 2021-22 budget called for last year and 70 officers above the expected attrition. With federal funding available through the American Rescue Plan Act, we should intensify our police hiring efforts. To help meet this goal, we should also adopt a robust lateral hiring program, which can help us get officers on the street
faster.
• Mark police and fire salaries to market rates. Retention is crucial to public safety. We made a commitment in our meet-and-confer agreement to keep pace with the market to help us retain talent, and we should honor that agreement this year.
• Improve 911 call center staffing. We need more 911 call takers, and we need to reduce burnout and turnover. Increase the authorized number of positions to 125. Use retention bonuses, pay increases, and other benefits to encourage hiring and retention for these difficult-to-fill positions.
• Task Force on Safe Communities programs. We should continue to fund all the Mayor’s Task Force on Safe Communities programs with general fund money, but we should also deploy federal funding to boost our blight remediation and violence interruption efforts that are aimed at improving public safety and strengthening neighborhoods.
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