Dallas Police Department

Dallas Police Department
Abbreviation	DPD
Patch of the Dallas Police Department.
Badge of the Dallas Police Department.
Agency overview
Formed	1881
Legal personality	Governmental: Government agency
Jurisdictional structure
Operations jurisdiction*	City of Dallas in the state of Texas, USA
Legal jurisdiction	Dallas, Texas
Governing body	Dallas City Council
General nature	Law enforcement Civilian agency
Operational structure
Officers	3,121
Agency executive	David Kunkle [will retire by April 2010], Chief of Police
Facilities
Stations	7
Helicopters	4
Footnotes
* Divisional agency: Division of the country, over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction.

The Dallas Police Department, established in 1881, is the principal law enforcement agency serving the city of Dallas, Texas.

Organization

The department is headed by a chief of police who is appointed by the city manager who, in turn, is hired by the Dallas City Council. The city manager is not an elected official.

Primary responsibility for calls for police service are seven operations divisions based on geographical subdivisions of the city. Each operations division is commanded by a deputy chief of police. The divisions are designated Central, Northeast, Southeast, South Central, Southwest, Northwest and North Central and operate from facilities which are referred to as substations. Each operations division's geographical area is further subdivided into sectors which are composed of beats, each of which is normally patrolled by a uniformed officer or officers in a marked squad car. Calls for service are received primarily through the city's 9-1-1 systemies which is answered by a city-operated emergency communications center. Each substation also has an investigative unit with detectives who are assigned cases of burglary and theft which are committed within the area covered by their division.

Other crimes are investigated by specialized investigative units including the Child Abuse Squad, Family ViolenceSquad, Narcotics Division, Robbery Unit, Assaults Unit, Homicide Unit, Forgery Squad and a Computer Crimes Team.

A specialized Tactical Division includes a SWAT Operations Unit, Mounted Unit, Canine Unit, Helicopter Unit and a Explosive Ordnance Squad. The SWAT Operations Unit was featured on a reality series for the A&E Network in 2006 entitled "Dallas SWAT".

History

Line of duty deaths

According to Officer Down Memorial Page, between 1892 and 2008, there were 78 line-of-duty deaths of members of the Dallas Police Department.^[1] The most well-known instance was the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit by Lee Harvey Oswald approximately forty minutes after Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

Other notable deaths include the murder of Officer Robert W. Wood on November 28, 1976 was later examined by filmmaker Errol Morris in his documentary, The Thin Blue Line.^[2] Additionally, Senior Corporal Victor Lozada, a motorcycle officer in the Traffic Division, was killed on February 22, 2008, while serving as part of an escort to Senator Hillary Clinton's motorcade near downtown Dallas for a presidential campaign event. Sr. Cpl. Lozada's funeral was attended by over 4,500 police officers as well as Sen. Clinton.^[3] Most recently, in January 2009, Senior Corporal Norm Smith, an 18-year veteran of DPD, was slain while attempting to serve an arrest warrant in the Southern Section of Dallas.^[4]

Controversy

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Dallas Police Department headquarters

Adams investigation

The Department was criticized for the arrest and investigation of Randall Dale Adams who was falsely convicted of murdering a police officer and was given the death penalty.^[2][5][6][7]

Robert Powell

On March 26, 2009, NFL player Ryan Moats's mother-in-law, Jonetta Collinsworth, died from breast cancer. Moats, his wife Tamisha (Collinsworth's daughter) and other family members rushed to Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano, Texas, when they were informed that she was close to death. After driving through two red lights and two stop signs^{[citation needed]}, Moats was stopped by police officer Robert Powell who delayed him for more than 10 minutes outside the hospital's emergency room, allowing the rest of the family to leave, even after Moats's ordeal was corroborated by a nurse in the hospital to Powell. Powell even drew his gun at Moats during the incident. By the time Moats reached Collinsworth, she had died. Moats questioned whether race could have played a factor in the interaction due to the nature and tone of the officer's remarks to the family; When asked if he felt if Officer Powell be fired, Moats said, "I really don't know. All I know is what he did was wrong. I mean, he stole a moment away from me that I can never get back. I'm really not the judge on what should happen to him. I think maybe his superiors and the Dallas police should handle what should happen to him."^[8] Officer Powell issued an apology to Moats. Police officials are investigating Powell's actions; he was placed on administrative leave but later resigned from the department.^{[9][9][10][10][11]} After Moats' incident with Officer Powell, former Cowboy Zach Thomas acknowledged that Powell was the same officer who handcuffed and jailed his wife Maritza after she was pulled over for making an illegal u-turn in July 2008.^[12]

On April 1, 2009, Powell resigned.[2]

Fake drug scandal

Beginning on December 31, 2001, the local ABC-affiliate, WFAA-TV, began broadcasting a series of investigative reports alleging that hundreds of pounds of cocaine and methamphetamine seized by undercover officers of the DPD Narcotics Division during 2001 were actually not illegal substances.^[13] The subsequent "fake drug" scandal led to dismissal of over 80 drug cases by the Dallas County District Attorney's office, multiple investigations, the indictment of three current or former DPD narcotics officers, the release of defendants (many whom were falsely accused Mexican immigrants) who had plead guilty to cases where later investigation revealed no illegal drugs were involved and the prosecution of multiple informants that had been used to make cases that were subsequently dismissed.^[13] On May 5, 2008 former Narcotics Division detective Mark Delapaz began serving a five-year sentence for making false statements in an application for a search warrant related to the scandal.^[14]

'No-English' ticket

David Kunkle has apologised to the local Hispanic community after it was revealed that his officers had fined 38 drivers for the novel offence of having an inadequate command of the English language. Among those who fell foul of the language police was 48-year-old Ernestina Valdez Mondragón, pulled on 2 October for making an illegal U-turn. Rookie cop Gary Bromley slapped her with a fine for the manoeuvre and not carrying her driving licence, and then topped it off by handing her a ticket for "not speaking English". It was later revelealed that around a half-dozen officers had fined mainly Hispanics for the same deficiency. Kunkle said: "We don't have abilities to determine proficiency in any language, and we shouldn't be doing it in the first place. I apologize to the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community." He concluded: "Any citations that were paid, we're going to reimburse the people who paid the citation."^[15]

Rank structure

Rank	Insignia
Chief
Executive Assistant Chief
Assistant Chief
Deputy Chief
Captain
Lieutenant
Sergeant
Senior Corporal
Police Officer

Members of the department who are lieutenant and below are protected by the city's civil service system with promotion based on the results of competitive examinations. Senior corporals typically are officers who serve either as field training officers in the Patrol Division or who serve as detectives in one of the department's investigative units. Members who are deputy chiefs and above are appointed.

Demographics

Breakdown of the makeup of the rank and file of DPD ^[16]:

• Male: 84%
• Female: 16%
• White: 63%
• African-American/Black: 21%
• Hispanic: 14%
• Asian: 1%
• Native American: 1%

See also

Dallas portal

Law enforcement/Law enforcement topics portal

• List of law enforcement agencies in Texas

References

External links

• Dallas Police Department official website
• Dallas Police and Firefighters employee website
• "Honoring All Fallen Members of the Dallas Police Department Dallas, TX". The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc. http://www.odmp.org/agency/924-dallas-police-department-texas. Retrieved 2008-03-18.