Continuing this month with the year this writer attended the
Dallas Police Academy which by the way has nothing to do with this piece but was
right in the heart of the Disco era, 1977, the Dallas Morning News had an
interesting, and a rare article of praise for the DPD. It reads in part,
In the old grey building on Harwood and Commerce, your
police department can’t be perfect. No-body driving a car likes to be stopped
and corrected, much less arrested. But an officer’s duty is just that-a duty.
It’s a duty as he sees it. He’s trained in what’s right and wrong, legal and
illegal. But he has to make an instant decision; and being human, he can be
wrong.
These thoughts come to mind when we read a minor item
recently out of city hall: in 1969 there were 666 (?) complaints against Dallas
police officers. By 1975 that total had been cut to 250, now it is down to
about 200. The department in 1977 receives about 500,000 calls for service a
year. Response time for emergency units is five minutes, nonemergency, eight
minutes.
That’s not bad for a city of nearly a million people who
cover an area of 360 miles. We note the above, editorially, to give a pat on
the back to a department that rarely gets it.
Or gets it in 2014 either…
When I got of the academy and started working east Dallas in
July, 1977 it seemed like the majority of calls that we answered on evenings
were minor accidents and alarm calls. I still have my notebooks that were
clipped to my handy steel clipboard that in my rookie mind, I also could use to
whack a suspect if need be. Luckily I never had to use it for this. Anyway,
most of the calls for service were for these two seemingly minor incidents.
Minor accidents were the number one pain. Officers serving
now have no idea how frustrating it was to find two people blocking traffic and
about to fight on a hot Friday rush hour on Ross Avenue when a rusted Toyota with
bad brakes ran into the back of a smoking Datsun or something with only a tail
light busted out. Later the police department got smart and did away from these
calls, even though people still refuse to pull out of the street to this day. It’s
one of those enduring urban myths that the two vehicles aren’t supposed to move
so the “expert” police officer can determine who really was a fault!
The DPD also was working on the false alarm problem. You
know we all were and are trained to be alert and vigilant every time that we answer
a call. But the problem was, and I remember this, you would go from call to call
to call, say on that Friday afternoon. An officer would answer a burglar alarm,
and knowing this alarm was usually bad, give the call only a cursory look, jump
back into your car, and go answer a “good” call. There were no fines for the
business’ or the alarm companies. So, they didn’t care. Heck, it was good to
have a squad car show up every evening at 8 o’clock or so, and it was free.
Sort of.
I remember business owners actually telling us this.
But, as we all know, 99.9% of burglar alarms were bad, but
it’s that one particular alarm call that when you rounded the back of a
building, there’s a burglar coming out of a back door with a pistol pointed at
your head.
Finally in the spring of 1977 the City and the police
department were looking for ways to curb these (every night at the same place)
burglar alarms. The proposed draft, only in its initial form but published in
the newspaper, received massive push back from of all places of business, banks…and
bankers. Back in those days, the term banker’s was usually describing the head
guys, not everyone that, well worked in a bank as today.
If Ft. Worth was a steer and cowboy town, Dallas was all
about banking and fashion. Really, that’s what the books say. Bankers were, and
to a point still are, heavy hitters in this town. So when they as a group
voiced displeasure on change to a system that always worked well, for them at
least, the City of course took notice.
False alarms in the city had gone from 20,000 in 1972 to
31,000 in 1976 and was increasing because of the booming 1970’s Dallas economy and
new construction. The police and fire departments were answering about 175
false alarms of one kind or another every day. The City estimated that it cost
1.8 million in 1977 money for personnel and equipment to answer these calls.
Robert McKnight of the City’s public utilities staff said “After
you go into a store for the third time in a period of a few hours because of a
false alarm, it’s easy for an officer to let his guard down and expose himself
to danger if the latest alarm proves to be the real thing.”
The DPD reported that of 700 or more alarms answered at financial
institutions in 1976, only three were “valid.”
One of the “bankers” (that term again meaning the 1977 era big
shots) called the ordinance proposal “outrageous” to have such fines.
Paul Bentley of the all powerful (in those days) First
National Bank, the downtown building with the rocket on top, now condos I
think, said “I feel we should be able to get that service without paying
through the nose for it.” Hmmm…
The City backed down somewhat as usual saying that the draft
was only a “proposal,” and a “working draft” and additional meetings will be held…
soon.
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