Between 2011 and 2019, the Dallas Police Department shrunk by about 444 officers, a more than 12 percent reduction in the size of the city’s police force. In that same time period, spending on police overtime increased by 676 percent.
It’s a number that helps explain why, in the $4.35 billion city budget being adopted by the Dallas City Council on Wednesday, it was $10 million in police overtime spending that proved the most controversial.
But it’s not a number that tells the full story, Police Chief Eddie Garcia told council members. Garcia, who took over as the city’s top cop earlier this year, rattled off some numbers of his own: since 2015, a 30 percent increase in police salaries, a 10 percent increase in high-priority 911 calls, a 30 percent increase in violent crime.
He said his officers need all the $28 million in overtime the department is budgeting for, including $10 million that a slim majority of the City Council voted two weeks ago to put into a special reserve fund. To get at that money, police officials would have to come to the council and explain their overtime spending.
Except that on Wednesday, the City Council—this time in a 12-3 vote—decided to put that $10 million back into the main overtime account for the police department. Police officials won’t have to ask for it.
What changed in the last two weeks? Political pressure. A different understanding of a new state law that effectively threatens cities that reduce their police budgets. Also, more numbers. Sorry about all the numbers.
After the council’s first vote on overtime spending, City Auditor Mark Swann released a preliminary audit reviewing police overtime over the last several years. Swann and his team reviewed 339 overtime transactions for the audit.
Of the 151 that had supporting documentation, there was no evidence of “waste or abuse,” according to the audit. Questioned by council members Wednesday, Swann acknowledged that left about 56 percent of the reviewed transactions without full documentation, and that there was a risk something was missing from those cases.
“We will acknowledge there’s a risk because there’s no documentation to support that there is no waste or abuse” Swann said. “But there is no documentation to support that there is waste or abuse.”
However, Swann told council members, 88 percent of all of the transactions reviewed had supervisor approval, which he called the “main control” for determining whether overtime spending was appropriate.
Mayor Pro Tem Chad West did the rest of the math, noting that left 12 percent of the overtime transactions reviewed by auditors completely unaccounted for.
“If this were any other department, we would all be tearing them up for their lack of checks and balances on overtime,” said West, who had the support of seven of his colleagues when he first proposed the budget amendment that would have locked $10 million in overtime spending behind a kind of a “checkpoint.”
On Wednesday, only Council members Paul Ridley and Jaime Resendez voted with West against peeling off that amendment.
“It doesn’t help to just throw money at an overtime fund without asking what it’s going to be used for,” Ridley said.
Mayor Eric Johnson has pointed to the release of the audit as evidence that West’s amendment creates unnecessary red tape for the police department. Council member Cara Mendelsohn, who often allies with the mayor on public safety issues and favors increased police spending, described the debate surrounding overtime as “a budget game, a political game.”
Other council members who initially voted with West have said they misunderstood how his amendment would have played in Austin, where state lawmakers will likely look for any excuse to use a new law that punishes cities for anything that even resembles taking money away from police departments.
Others, although they might not say it aloud, likely feared being painted as anti-police in overheated—and inaccurate—political rhetoric about “defunding” law enforcement.
Because the police department is not any other department. Public safety takes up the largest part of the city’s budget and often occupies a lot of real estate in the minds of people who vote in City Council elections.
In budget discussions, almost every council member feels obligated to take pains explaining their support for the police and for Garcia. Every council member has backed a 10 percent increase in public safety spending, which will pay for the hiring of hundreds of new officers, new squad cars, and an expansion of the RIGHT Care program, which pairs officers with social workers on calls regarding mental health emergencies. The department’s overall budget for 2022 will come in at about $550 million.
“I do not believe that supporting public safety and calling for accountability are mutually exclusive requests,” West said. “Our residents want a strong police force and financial responsibility.”
There is still a chance they’ll get both. Councilman Adam McGough, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, said there was no reason not to give the department the overtime it was asking for now, but that “we’ll look closely at how overtime is spent.”
The city auditor’s final report should also include recommendations on how the department can improve its record keeping.
“I look forward to the audit being complete and recommendations we can have to ensure we are all accountable to the residents of Dallas that we’re using this money wisely,” Garcia said.
