Dear Chief Click: You are going to hear a lot of talk from the politicians who hired you last month about how to do your job, and that’s fine. It’s their job to do a lot of talking.
But I wanted to share several stories with you that I hope will give you a clearer picture of the task you face – a much clearer picture than you’ll get from the numbers and statistics at City Hall.
The first story comes from Mt. Auburn, an East Dallas neighborhood near Samuell-Grand Park. It comes from Ed Williams, who has lived in Mt. Auburn for more than two decades.
Ed called 911 early one Sunday morning (4:23 a.m., to be exact) a couple of weeks ago to report that one of his neighbors was firing a gun. Forty-five minutes after he called, an after no policemen had arrived, Ed called 911 again. The dispatcher told Ed they would get to his call as quickly as they could.
The second story takes place in the pages of the Advocate every month. One of our most popular features – if not the most popular – is the monthly crime statistics, which enable our readers to monitor crime in their neighborhood.
This feature is so well-followed that a reader called to let us know that we had not included all of his neighborhood in the June crime statistics map – and he even knew his neighborhood’s police department beat number.
The third story is mine, Chief Click. I live on the corner of Swiss and Fitzhugh, an area known for stately homes, tree-lined median, and numerous working girls. Regular readers of this space know that one of the ways I gauge the crime problem in Dallas is to count the number of hookers draped over the wall at the intersection of Swiss and Fitzhugh.
Under your predecessor, Bill Rathburn, the prostitutes vanished. As soon as he left, they came back.
Chief, know this: I am not cop-bashing. I wouldn’t be a policeman for all of the money in the world. But no one and nothing in Dallas – not the mayor, not the City Council, not the city manager – will have more of a direct, day-to-day impact on our lives than you will.
Crime is something everyone in Dallas worries about, from the folks in Preston Hollow who live behind security guards and nine-foot walls to those of us who can’t walk our dogs without running into a potential perpetrator.
Your immediate predecessors, save for Rathburn, let us down. To make matters worse, the Dallas Police Department is a political pit, a jungle of in-fighting and back-stabbing at both department headquarters and City Hall. Two of the best cops I’ve known apparently fell victims to this brawling. Now, instead of catching bad guys, they are pushing paper somewhere.
Even Rathburn, who was such a good chief that the mayor and I both thought so (and, as the mayor will tell you, we don’t often agree), fell victim to this. Rathburn’s considerable skill and talent couldn’t keep him out of the crossfire, which is why he is in Atlanta instead of making sure someone responds to Ed Williams’ 911 call in less than 45 minutes.
Most of us realize that Dallas is a big city, and that crime will be a part of our lives as long as we live here. It’s one of the trades we made when we decided not to live in Allen.
What we want you to realize is that we need a chief whose first priority is not hobnobbing with the elite or playing up to the city manager. We need a chief whose first priority is protecting our homes and our families.
That’s not too much to ask, is it?
