Dallas’ police chief role has been temporarily filled by Michael Igo since October when former Chief Eddie Garcia packed up for Austin to join former City Manager T.C. Broadnax in city government there. In the time since Garcia’s departure, Dallas voters passed the controversial Proposition U, which mandates the hiring of 900 more officers and attempts to shore up the pension fund. That staffing mandate, along with the political pressures tied to it, will undoubtedly be a prime concern for Dallas’ next police chief.
Other challenges the department faces are increased call response times, a fractured City Council on homelessness response, a marijuana decriminalization measure that contradicts state law, mounting political pressure surrounding immigration enforcement and an underfunded pension system.
The finalists for the job are Igo; Catrina M. Shead, DPD’s assistant chief; Roberto Arredondo Jr., chief of the Carrollton Police Department; Brian Boetig, a former FBI assistant director; and Daniel C. Comeaux, special agent in charge with the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) Houston office. The candidates will meet with City Hall leaders today, and City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert is expected to make a decision on the hiring by the end of the second week of April.
“The hiring of a police chief is one of the most critical decisions I will make as city manager,” Tolbert said Tuesday. “My commitment is making sure that we don't drag this out. … And as I talk to my Dallas team, I continue to talk about us running up the score on the leaderboard, which is where Dallas belongs. And this leader will help us run up that score.”
Roberto Arredondo Jr.
Arredondo became chief of the Carrollton Police Department in 2023, and before then, he served 23 years with the Dallas Police Department. He said the opportunity to take over Dallas’ chief position would be a chance to “finish where he started” and to do so armed with the tools of an experienced chief.Like police departments across the country, the Carrollton Police Department struggled with staffing after COVID-19, he said. He believes he knows “exactly how to hire cops” and would bring an approach to hiring to DPD that could be scaled for the larger department.
“The best time that the Dallas Police Department ever had was when they had about 3,700 officers,” Arredondo told the Observer. “Everybody seems to be pulling in the same direction right now. We have a council, we have a mayor, we have a city manager that are all pulling in the same direction, and that is to support the Dallas Police Department. In order to be successful you have to have that type of support.”
Arredondo believes the first step to aiding Dallas’ hiring and retention process is building a servant-oriented culture within the department, where officers are “treated with dignity and respect so that they understand how to do that in the community.”
Brian Boetig
While Boetig started his career as a police officer, he has spent the last 24 years with the FBI in a number of leadership roles. He has served both domestically and internationally and spent time as the FBI’s liaison to the CIA. Boetig said he was drawn to Dallas’ police chief posting because, even with the challenges facing the department, the police force is “light years ahead” of many other cities across the country.“I'm not coming in to try to fix something that's broken, and, I’m stealing what would be the greatest leadership quote ever by taking good to great,” Boetig told the Observer. “[DPD is] already at great, but if I can make them even better that would be a great opportunity.”
When it comes to hiring, Boetig believes patrol officers should be charged with scouting and referring the department’s next wave of recruits because those officers are engaged in the community. He’s a “core value” guy who said he would lead the department in pursuit of Dallas’ goals of empathy, ethics, excellence, engagement and equity.
Boetig added that he is not concerned about any fractures among the City Council, as he has spent his career in a “collaborator” role and believes he can be “the glue” that fixes any animosity surrounding public safety issues.
Daniel C. Comeaux
Comeaux started as a Houston Police Department officer before transferring to the DEA in 1997. He serves as special agent in charge of the DEA’s Houston field division, which oversees 12 offices across Texas and is responsible for efforts along 650 miles of the Texas-Mexico border.Over the course of his career, Comeaux said he has seen “good policing and bad policing,” and believes he knows how to bridge his local and federal law enforcement experiences to lead the Dallas Police Department forward. He said he would spend his first day in office “listening” to what the community needs and would strive to build public trust in the department.
“We have to be in the community. We have to go old school in the sense of outreach,” Comeaux said. “We need to get the policemen back in the community because the bottom line is, in order for the community to trust us, they have to believe in us and they have to know us.”
Comeaux said he would prioritize officer hiring in his first months on the job and look to offer contracts to retired officers who “still have some gas left in their tanks” to supplement the department’s staffing mandate.
While his last 28 years have been spent in drug enforcement, Comeaux told the Observer he would take over the chief role in support of Dallas’ recently passed marijuana decriminalization measure, despite challenges from Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton.
Michael Igo
Igo took over as DPD’s interim chief in October after Garcia’s departure, and after six trial-by-fire months, says he is all the more ready to take over the gig permanently. Igo started with the department in 1991 and said he has seen issues, especially political ones, emerge and be solved over his 34 years in the department.“Police work is cyclical. … A lot of those issues you just can't enforce your way out of. There has to be collaboration with city leadership here, there has to be collaboration with other city departments. There has to be collaboration with the non-governmental organizations as well. And so we are working on those things,” Igo told the Observer. “I have a passion for law enforcement, and I have a passion for the police department. If those two weren't present, I probably wouldn't be standing in front of you today.”
Igo added that in his interim chief capacity, he has met with the leadership of the Dallas HERO organization, a politically influential group that helped pass the Proposition U mandate and sent a letter to the city earlier this week threatening a lawsuit if the city does not comply with increased staffing and pension support. Igo said he is “on the same page” as the organization when it comes to the need for more officers in the department and that he plans to propose several “game-changing” recruitment strategies to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee next month.
“I anticipate that between the next two years, we'll hit 3,600 to 3,700 officers,” Igo said.
Igo already has at least one cheerleader on the City Council: District 4’s Carolyn King Arnold has coined the phrase “I go with Igo,” in council meetings. It’s hard to compete with a guy who has a slogan.
Catrina M. Shead
Shead is also a 30-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department. She serves as an assistant chief and would be the second woman to hold the position if appointed. As a Dallas native, Shead said she owes the city a “debt of gratitude.”Hiring and retention are Shead’s top priorities. She said she “understands” the push to hire more officers but wants to ensure Dallas hires “the right” officers. She also plans to continue the Violent Crime Reduction Plan started by Garcia in 2021, which has been credited with contributing to the number of murders falling to pre-COVID levels over the last four years.
When it comes to the department’s role in handling homelessness, Shead said she would continue Dallas’ compassion-based approach rather than a criminalization-based one. If an unhoused person steals a blanket in winter, she says, the crime is done out of necessity rather than criminal intent, so the city needs to do better about connecting those in need with resources to prevent crimes like theft in the first place.
“You can't arrest yourself out of homelessness. You cannot arrest everybody just because they're intoxicated and cannot do what they're supposed to do. It doesn't work that way,” Shead told the Observer. “Mental health concerns happen, alcoholism happens, and other things happen in the community. That's what we should be working on.”
