Dallas residents are longing for increased police resources and government accountability, but it is unclear if City officials will let them have it.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, four citizen-led petitions were recently certified by the city secretary to appear as Dallas City Charter proposition amendments on the November ballot. However, City Attorney Tammy Palomino seemingly remains noncommittal as to whether she will advise the Dallas City Council to mess with the petition language and potentially mislead voters or undermine the spirit of the petitions.
Dallas HERO, a bipartisan initiative seeking to amend the Dallas City Charter, organized three of the citizen-driven petitions. If approved by voters, one would increase Dallas police staffing and pay, one would create performance incentives for the City manager and tie pay to critical areas of resident concern, and the last one would allow residents to sue City leaders for not abiding by the Dallas City Charter or City Code. The group obtained a total of 169,000 signatures across the three petitions.
Pete Marocco, the executive director of Dallas HERO, said his group’s interactions with citizens were overwhelmingly positive.
“The people of Dallas are screaming for these solutions,” Marocco told The Dallas Express. “Everybody knows it’s necessary. The Dallas Police Department has said they need more police.”
DPD has been laboring under significant resource constraints for years. The department only fields around 3,000 officers, despite a prior City analysis that asserts roughly 4,000 are needed based on Dallas’ population. Another 1,000 officers or so would purportedly reduce police response times.
Additionally, the Dallas City Council opted to allocate DPD only $654 million this fiscal year. This figure is significantly less than what other high-crime cities, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, spend on their police departments.
Marocco said Dallas residents told his team stories about the concerning lack of a police presence in the city. He said his petition, which mandates increased staffing, pay, and pension security for Dallas police, would address the issue.
“This is hopefully something that as we go into our campaign, people realize this is not a partisan issue,” he told DX. “This is not something that any reasonable citizen should oppose.”
Municipal leaders in Texas have historically attempted to adopt misleading ballot language for citizen-driven petitions they oppose, policy experts previously told DX.
“There may be unanticipated challenges, as there always are,” Marocco previously told DX. “We are watching very carefully the next few weeks.”
“We have let the City know that there is a statuary requirement and case law that supports us,” he continued. “They cannot alter the intent. So if there are bureaucratic tricks at work, we have anticipated those and believe we will get through them without a real problem.”
Dallas HERO issued a poll that revealed residents would take action against City leaders who attempt to manipulate petition language, as previously reported by DX.