'Stop Cop City': Proposed DPD Training Facility Faces Local Opposition

Tamara Neal, a third-generation Dallasite who grew up in South Oak Cliff, now lives downtown, but her southern Dallas roots remain strong. She's trying to make an impact on her former home by advocating for people to vote against proposition F in the 2024 bond package. She wants to stop a new police training facility from being built in her old part of town.

Proposition F includes $50 million for the construction of a new Dallas police training academy at the University of North Texas at Dallas. The biggest problem with this specific prop, she said, is the lack of community buy-in for the project.

“The entire process has not been community-centered,” Neal said. “The community needs to be brought to the table before you say how much money you get to assign to a militarized police training facility.”

She’s organizing with a group called Community Movement Builders, hoping to convince enough people to vote against proposition F to stop the new facility from springing up in the largely Black and Latino community that surrounds UNT Dallas. There's also a grassroots effort called Stop Cop City Coalition aimed to stop proposition F.

In 2013, the organization Stand for Children – Dallas released data on what some call the cradle-to-prison pipeline, a term used to describe the odds that a child winds up in prison based upon where they grew up, according to The Dallas Morning News. Based on 2008 data, the organization’s research identified areas of the city that account for the most inmates in state prisons. Ten Dallas ZIP codes accounted for 3,100 prisoners. All but one were in the southern part of the city, including 75241, where UNT Dallas sits.

“That automatically lets you know that the community has been targeted,” Neal said. “This community has been disproportionately and unfairly targeted by law enforcement. … It is the wrong investment in the wrong time for the wrong purpose.”

"It is the wrong investment in the wrong time for the wrong purpose.” – Tamara Neal, Stop Cop City Dallas

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She would rather see the money address other community needs, such as health care and housing. “We have to think about the overall well-being of this community,” she said. Neal isn’t alone in this thinking.

Yafeuh Balogun, an activist, area resident and precinct chair for the Dallas County Democrats, said he, too, would like to see the money spent differently. “I feel that the proposed money should go toward having a legitimate grocery store, or helping create summer jobs for at-risk youth, or finding ways to promote financial literacy, versus putting a police academy directly in the community,” Balogun said.

According to a press release from UNT Dallas, plans call for the facility to sit on a five-acre section of the college’s 268-acre campus. It would be adjacent to a park shared by the campus and training facility and include classrooms, a gym and workout facility, and virtual reality training technology for officers at all levels. If approved, it will serve new recruits, supervisors, civilian employees and law enforcement from across the state. It would also be the new home of the Caruth Police Institute.

Dollars are already committed for the project. In February, the city and UNT Dallas received a $10 million grant from Communities Foundation of Texas to go toward the proposed facility. In 2023, the Texas legislature committed $20 million for the project. Now, voters are being asked to help pay for the rest of the facility's costs.

DPD’s current training facility, opened in 1990, was meant to be temporary. The years have not been kind to the old location. “Our academy, as it is now, is embarrassing,” Dallas Police Chief Eddie García said at a Public Safety Committee meeting last year. “It’s not what this city and this department stands for. It’s amazing the training that goes on at the academy. It’s amazing the men and women that graduate from the academy. But we need a better product.”

The DPD did not reply to the questions we submitted regarding complaints about the training facility's location prior to publication. If approved, construction of the facility would start in 2025 with completion expected in 2027.

Neal worries about the effect the facility could have on the surrounding community.

“You don’t get to come train in our communities and then take that same training two blocks, three blocks, four blocks, five blocks over and inflict that harm,” Neal said. “You don’t get to box us in. We tell you how we want public safety to run in our communities.”

Voting on all bond propositions takes place on May 4. Early voting runs April 22–30.