I was as shocked and saddened by the recent tragic events in Dallas as anyone. Perhaps even more than most Kyle residents because, up until 20 months ago, Dallas was my home for the previous 44 years of my life. The City of Dallas was a client of mine when I was a partner in a prominent media consulting firm and after we dissolved that firm I went to work for the City as the director of its Public information Department. I worked closely with then assistant police chief David Brown on several crime prevention initiatives focused on Northeast Dallas and we remain friends today. I spent last weekend in Dallas, paid an emotional visit to the memorial outside Dallas Police headquarters and received a last minute invitation to attend the memorial ceremony Tuesday at the Myerson at which President Obama and others spoke so eloquently.
I say all this because I don’t want anyone to think I am anti-police by any stretch of the imagination, but the Kyle City Council is preparing to pass a resolution at its Tuesday meeting that ignores one important, unassailable fact: The five police officers killed last week in Dallas would be alive today if a white police officer in Falcon Heights, Minn., had not fatally shot 32-year-old black man, Philando Castille, last Wednesday during what was supposed to be a routine traffic stop; of if, the day before that, two police officers had not fatally shot a 37-year-old black man, Alton B. Sterling, during an arrest in Baton Rouge, La., a killing that prompted the U.S. Justice Department to initiate a civil rights investigation into a series of killings that has fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.
The city council’s blanket statement that claims all "the men and women of our nation’s law enforcement agencies wear their uniforms with honor, dedication, and integrity in the line of duty" and that "these uniforms have made them targets by those who seek to harm law enforcement officers simply because of their profession and commitment to duty" is a generalization that is not only a slap in the face of African-Americans and other non-whites but is also jingoistic and blatantly untrue, as witnessed by last week’s shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana. Although there is no question many of these were justified, 990 persons were killed by police last year and to date, 522 this year, the latest being Richard G. Dinneny, a 56-year-old man armed with a pellet gun who was shot to death by police Wednesday during a domestic dispute in Middletown, N.Y. As of one week ago, there had been 11 more fatal shootings by police this year than at the same time last year.
The Washington Post has become so alarmed by these numbers that it has created a database "cataloging every fatal shooting nationwide by a police officer in the line of duty, collecting data on those who were killed and details of the shootings. The effort began because data compiled by the federal government was unreliable and incomplete." The newspaper also sent "open-records requests to every police department involved in a fatal shooting to compile information on the officers who fired shots, something no federal agency tracks. One shooting may involve officers from multiple departments.
"Requests have been denied for various reasons, most commonly that investigations are ongoing," the Post reports. "Other reasons for denial have included that the information is not a public record, personnel files are private or the department chose not to disclose."
Right here in Kyle, the city has pursued legal action against a police officer for insubordination, among other things, yet now the council is going to go on record saying this officer as well as all the others "wear their uniforms with honor, dedication, and integrity in the line of duty." They can’t have it both ways.
I recognize and sympathize with the intentions of the proposed resolution but the simple fact is that it unfairly takes the tragic events in Dallas completely out of context and fails to recognize that not only do police lives, but all lives matter.
There’s another pair of actions that I find interesting on Tuesday’s agenda and I hope will be clarified during discussion on these particular issues. Item 11 has the city adopting various national and international codes and making them a part of its ordinances including the 2014 National Electrical Code, Section 901.63.3 of which reads: "False alarms and nuisance alarms shall not be given, signaled or transmitted or caused or permitted to be given, signaled or transmitted in any manner." Item 13 on the agenda negates that, however, by proposing an ordinance governing alarms in the city that basically says that it’s OK to have a few false alarms, just don’t make a habit of it. ("It shall be unlawful for any person who owns, leases, or is in control of a property or structure equipped with an alarm system to permit or fail to prevent the occurrence of more than three false alarm notifications within any consecutive 12-month period." Later the proposed ordinance says an alarm permit may be revoked if the holder has more than 15 false alarms in any year.) Whoops.
I also find it interesting that on the same agenda that will consider the second reading of an ordinance to provide for the installation of a pair of stop signs in Plum Creek (item 7), that there’s also a proposal (item 12) to regulate how traffic control devices (stop signs, electric signals, etc.) are approved in the future. It says that any neighborhood organization requesting the installation of any such device must file a request with the Public Works director and pay a deposit for a "Signal Warrant Analysis" to determine if the device is warranted or not. The proposed ordinance then says: "If such a device is warranted, the deposit will be refunded by the City. If signage is unwarranted, the fee will not be reimbursed, but the City Council may still vote to install the traffic control device." What is not said is who pays for the installation of an unwarranted traffic control device. Personally, I think that cost should be borne exclusively by the neighborhood requesting it and not all the taxpayers of the city, the overwhelming majority of whom will not be affected one way or another by the device’s installation.
You can read the entire council agenda and all its supporting materials here.
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