Pete Oppel, a guy who has been around Dallas for a long time in a variety of jobs (including working at both the City and the DMN) posted an interesting piece today about the possible short-term nature of Chief David Kunkle’s tenure with the Dallas police department. You can read Oppel’s reasoning yourself here, but the synopsis is this: What would be the point of making former assistance police chief David Brown a temporary assistant city manager (a higher ranking position than assistant chief) and then send him back to the police department? Pete speculates that Brown, one of the best communicators I’ve ever seen in terms of police guys, might be designated by city manager Mary Suhm to wait in the wings for a Kunkle "resignation". It’s all speculation, of course, and personally I think Kunkle is doing a good job and doesn’t need to go anywhere, but when Mayor Leppert ran Kunkle up and down the flagpole awhile back on the verified alarm system issue, it crossed my mind that perhaps Kunkle might want to start looking at the grocery store for empty boxes to start packing…
