A Dallas police officer turned himself in to Mesquite authorities on Monday after allegedly being linked to stolen service weapons.
Sgt. Thomas Fry, a 22-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, was arrested on three counts of theft of a firearm — state felony charges punishable by up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
While the investigation into the alleged crimes is still ongoing, Fry is alleged to have stolen three duty firearms between August 2021 and July 2022 while assigned to detention services at the Southeast Patrol Division, per a DPD news release. This is located in Council Member Jaime Resendez’s District 5.
DPD’s Public Integrity Unit began investigating Fry on October 10, 2022. A spokesperson for the department told WFAA that Fry remains an active officer and is “currently out on injury time.”
Two DPD officers were fired last week after allegedly violating several policies, including by purportedly failing to provide a prisoner with medical treatment and making sexual comments to a woman during a call for service, as reported in The Dallas Express.
Only around 3,000 officers are active within DPD, far less than the 4,000 recommended by a City report. The shortfall has contributed to lagging police response times — with just 54% meeting DPD goals — and upticks in certain categories of crime — such as motor vehicle theft, which has risen 11.9% year over year, per data from the City’s crime analytics dashboard as of April 9.
As covered previously in The Dallas Express, DPD has struggled to recruit and retain new officers despite attempts to boost advertising, devise a City employee referral program, modify hiring disqualifiers, and more. Adding to its difficulties, the Dallas City Council budgeted just $654 million to DPD this fiscal year, considerably less than the amounts allocated to police in other high-crime jurisdictions, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
In neighboring Fort Worth, City leaders have been supporting increasingly more community-based crime prevention programs and neighborhood police units. For instance, a dedicated police force and private security guards patrol the downtown area of Fort Worth. As a result, the neighborhood regularly sees lower crime reports than Downtown Dallas.
