A North Texas man was recaptured at McDonald’s on Sunday after slipping away from police during a prisoner transport.
Kenneth Minafee III, 20, faces a new escape charge after allegedly slipping out of his restraints while being transported by the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) at around 3:30 p.m., according to The Dallas Morning News.
He reportedly took off on foot but was found at a nearby McDonald’s 20 minutes later and taken into custody again without incident. Terrell and Forney police, as well as KCSO deputies, aided in the search.
Minafee is currently incarcerated at the Kaufman County Law Enforcement Center. His alleged escape is now under investigation, particularly KCSO’s handling of the prisoner transport, per CBS News Texas.
The suspect had been initially arrested by officers with the Forney Police Department on February 3 for allegedly burglarizing a building in Forney.
In Dallas, 511 reports of burglaries have been documented this year as of February 4, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard.
The Dallas Police Department has been laboring under the burden of a significant staffing shortage, with just around 3,000 officers in the field despite a City report calling for approximately 4,000 to adequately maintain public safety. As a result, DPD’s police response times, including for high-priority P1 calls, such as home burglaries in progress, averaged 10 minutes last month, as covered by The Dallas Express. The goal for such calls is 8 minutes.
Alongside struggles to cut response time averages, comparative studies on Downtown Dallas and Fort Worth’s city center demonstrate that roughly seven times more crime happens in the former. The City of Fort Worth deploys a dedicated police unit that works in collaboration with private security guards to patrol its downtown area.
In Dallas, City officials budgeted only $654 million for DPD operations this year, far less than other high-crime jurisdictions, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
