A local activist group has requested that the Department of Justice investigate the Dallas Police Department for its “pattern and practice of unlawful conduct that violates residents’ rights.”
The complaint, submitted on Thursday on behalf of Dallas-based Mothers Against Police Brutality (MAPB), outlines what it calls a “half-century of unaccountable police brutality” that created within the Dallas Police Department (DPD) a “culture of racialized violence and abuse of citizens that persists.”
MAPB said it analyzed records from DPD’s Internal Affairs Department from 1968 through 2022 and discovered that, out of roughly 3,000 excessive-force cases, less than 200 internal investigations resulted in findings of officer wrongdoing. MAPB said the data pointed to “substandard investigations as well as disproportionate violence against Blacks and Latinos.”
In a review of officer-involved shootings between 2003 and 2017, 49% of the victims were black, even though black residents made up only about 24% of the population of Dallas, according to the 2010 Census.
According to the activist group’s analysis, 23% of former or current officers in the database have had at least one excessive-force complaint, and some have had many more. One officer highlighted in the complaint had 42 misconduct complaints and had been investigated 10 times for excessive force, but was allowed to remain on the police force until he fatally shot a young Latina woman in 2017.
The complaint also alleges that Dallas City Hall has attempted to stem the flow of information about police misconduct by violating public records laws, while law enforcement officials have “attempted to intimidate and discredit those who expose evidence of department shortcomings.”
A DPD spokesperson told CBS News that MAPB’s complaint had not been shared with the department. However, the spokesperson said the department takes the issues addressed in the complaint seriously, adding that DPD has “worked proactively for years to promote and uphold the highest standards of policing.”
MAPB’s mission is to prevent police use of deadly force, to advocate for change in police deadly force policies and practices, and to advocate for families who have lost loved ones to police violence, per the organization’s website.
Collette Flanagan founded MAPB after her 25-year-old son was shot to death by a Dallas police officer in 2013. The unarmed black man and father of two was shot 7 times.