Rent a Cop

Sam Jamal-Eddine, an apartment owner I wrote about last week, says a single Dallas police officer, operating more or less like the Lone Ranger, has come to his assistance.

Hidden in the haystack have always been great cops in Dallas--heroes. They put their heads down, mind their own business, do police work the way Lance Armstrong rides a bike.

But the larger part of the answer is that the rest of the cops are right, too. It is hopeless. It's hopeless because we don't have enough cops. Dallas is almost unique among American cities its size for having allowed the ratio of cops per capita to fall in the last decade, while the cities that have seen sharp decreases in crime, Chicago and New York notably, have been boosting their per capita rate.

We have 2,942 uniforms on the force now, according to the department's public information office. Using the Census 2003 estimated population of Dallas, that works out to about one cop for every 410 residents. New York has one cop for every 220 residents.

Figure it out.

More cops means higher taxes. When the city council ran up a couple of very small Mylar balloons two weeks ago, suggesting we might need to raise taxes, Laura Miller, supposedly our strong-mayor type, immediately came out against a tax hike.

Coming out against a tax hike in a city that has one of the highest crime rates in America is sheer political cowardice. But that also tells only half the story. The other half is that Miller, aided and abetted by many on the council, then wants to blame the crime rate on private property owners.

We can't do anything. So you do it. Or we'll punish you.

I attended hearings in Austin last week before the Senate State Affairs Committee on proposed changes to a law Dallas has been using to punish property owners for their failure to reduce crime. It's a so-called nuisance abatement law, designed to help cities shut down crackhouses and hot-sheet motels. But Dallas has been using it to whip up on owners of legitimate businesses. The Senate, like the House before it, is trying to figure out why.

During those hearings, Kathy Carlton of the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas told the committee the city comes after property owners with a whipsaw approach. It made me think of the sword and the cross.

On one hand, the city may sue you, because you haven't done enough to cleanse your area of crime. On the other hand, Carlton testified that the city has been telling owners, "You need to hire more security, and we recommend off-duty police officers.

"They offer phone numbers [for hiring off-duty cops]," she said. "They even offered to put a police officer on the payroll as an assistant manager."

Wow. That's like a bad mafia movie. We tink youse needs a partnuh fer youse bizness, and dat's us.

I discussed this issue in detail last week with Chief Kunkle, with Deputy Chief Julian Bernal, who is over the police department's nuisance abatement team, and with Lieutenant Jan Easterling of the department's public information office. I asked them if they thought property owners might get a message that they either need to accept the cross and hire some off-duty cops or they'll get the sword--a lawsuit.

Kunkle said, "We don't believe we're doing that. As far as sending a message that that needs to be done, I have not seen that occur."

Easterling said the department videotapes all meetings with property owners to document that nothing improper has taken place. Chief Bernal said it would not be in the department's interest to stray from a straight-up enforcement of the nuisance statute.

But look: This off-duty cop thing is a huge industry in Dallas. When I got back to town, I called Gerald Henigsman, executive director of the apartment association, and he told me his group had surveyed their members to see how much they spend each year for off-duty city of Dallas police officers.

Twenty million a year.

You got it. From apartment owners alone. Think of all the other kinds of off-duty work cops do.

A cop gets a base rate of $35 an hour for working off-duty security. If he or she works one shift a week, 48 to 50 weeks, that's a gross of around 14 grand a year. That's a fairly good incentive. You might just suggest, while you're out there telling Barbara Edmondson you can't do much about the Judge while you're on duty, that she hire you off duty.

I have known Henigsman since he was a city of Dallas deputy city manager many moons ago. I asked him if he thought there could be any kind of deliberate extortion going on.

"To be perfectly honest with you," he said, "I don't really believe that there's an actual decision that this is going to be an opportunity to push employment.

"They have to come up with something that they can tell people. Obviously the whole idea is to try to get the property to assume more responsibility for crime control. I think it is a natural instinct to say, 'Hire some off-duty Dallas policemen.'