Stuff It

Dallas City Hall thumbs nose, gives Bronx cheer to Legislature

A A A Comments By Jim Schutze Thursday, Jun 16 2005

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I spoke with Mundy's commanding officer, Lieutenant Michael Holder at Southeast. I asked if Mundy has anything to do with the city's nuisance abatement teams. Holder told me he wasn't really sure what Mundy's duties are, and he'd have to get back to me. He never did.

I spoke with Mundy. He said he wasn't really sure if he had visited Davenport's car wash, but he might have. He said he didn't recall talking to Davenport, but he could have. He said he talks to a lot of business owners.

Mark Graham

Police Chief David Kunkle thinks the new urban nuisance law is a minor change. Legislators thought they'd kicked Dallas' butt.

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"I'm just giving them pointers and ideas of the things that they could do," he said. "But I've never chewed anybody out, telling them that they're not doing enough, anything like that."

By the way, I'm not sure whether Corporal Mundy's name is spelled Mundy or Munday, because he declined to tell me the correct spelling. Maybe he wasn't sure.

I spoke with a witness to the conversation, Tiwangi Kyle, owner of a hair salon who was getting her car washed when the encounter took place. She couldn't hear what was said, but she could tell Davenport was taking a dressing-down by the officer.

"As I looked at the officer's face," Kyle told me, "I could tell he was giving him [Davenport] a hard time. You could judge by gestures, facial expressions and everything."

You want to know what I think the message is for Davenport, for Budget Suites, for apartment owners and other legitimate businesses all over town? The message is that Dallas City Hall thinks the Legislature is a yahoo joke. Dallas is going to keep right on doing what it's been doing--holding private businesses responsible, suing them for locating in a city with one of the nation's worst crime rates and then failing to do anything about it.

Because the city can't do anything about its crime problem.

And anybody who thinks different in Dallas is going to have visits from police in nice new cars with big cigars, bringing the kind of message you'd expect from the Mafia.

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