Dallas City Wire

Dallas needs more police officers, says a local Republican Party official.

She adds that the city also needs to fund the officers it has and pay them a fair and competitive salary. Otherwise, it will continue to train men and women who depart to work elsewhere.

These are the views of Susan Fountain, a Dallas resident and careful observer of the city’s politics. Fountain has watched the ongoing debate at Dallas City Council meetings and is disappointed by the rhetoric she has heard and the decisions made.

Susan Fountain | Twitter

While the council voted Sept. 23, to increase the police budget for fiscal year 2021 by $8 million, from $501 million to $509 million, it did uphold an earlier decision to redirect $7 million planned to cover police overtime.

That led Mayor Eric Johnson to vote against the budget and issue a strongly worded statement after the 12-hour meeting.

Fountain did not agree with the mayor’s proposal to cut salaries for city staffers paid $60,000 or more a year. They can’t afford a 25% reduction in pay, in her view.

But she said considering that City Manager T.C. Broadnax was paid $416,565 in 2019, more than President Trump or Gov. Greg Abbott, that would one place to cut.

The city owns a horse ranch in south Dallas. It does wonderful work for charities, Fountain said, and perhaps some of those organizations could help pick up some of the costs.

Dallas Police Chief U. Reneé Hall, who announced her resignation this summer, faced an uphill climb when she arrived in 2017, in Fountain’s view. She had never been a police chief, serving as a deputy chief in her native Detroit.

“Chief Hall was thrown into a situation when she was facing a shortage of police officers,” Fountain said.

When she lost support this year and faced public criticism as well as barbs from the council, Hall announced she was departing. The problem with a shortage of officers remains.

Fountain said there is “rampant crime” in Dallas County and not enough officers to prevent it or protect the public. One of the problems is the wages paid to Dallas police officers, who are often lured away by area law enforcement agencies who offer higher salaries.

“We can’t replace the officers we lose every year,” she said. “If we have enough officers, we don’t need to pay overtime.”

Fountain, who represents District 16 on the State Republican Executive Committee, said the public wants more cops on the street. A Gallup poll conducted in August found that 61% of Black Americans surveyed want the amount of police presence to remain the same in their area.

She said the 21st Century Policing program introduced by President Barack Obama in 2014 has been ineffective. Police officers are being trained to be polite to criminals, she said, and that isn’t an option in many cases. 

"They have to deal with the lowest of the low,” Fountain said.

She is no fan of the Dallas Citizens Police Review Board, which she said is controlled by a “very radicalized bunch of people who hate the police.”

This whole anti-police mentality is dangerous, in Fountain’s view. She isn’t sure if Dallas will face more unrest and possible riots when it doesn’t have enough sworn officers ready to respond.

"I don’t know,” Fountain said. “It all depends on the leadership.”