Civic Culture and Urban Change: Governing Dallas

6. The Regency at Work: Redesigning Policing

6 The Regency at Work: Redesigning Policing The First Rule of Holes: When you’re in one, stop digging. Molly Ivins The mixture of bureaucratic and identity politics in the school system confounded the ability of either the fading oligarchy , the federal courts, or the managerial regency to adapt to the transformations of the Dallas economy and population and resolve the interrelated problems of minority rights, school governance, and educational quality. The other vital urban service, policing, generated parallel issues of race and governance. The Dallas Police Department had been slow to integrate minority officers into the force and had a reputation for unequal enforcement of the law in Anglo and minority communities. Actions of officers and the institutional behavior of the department and the Dallas Police Association produced some of the city’s most dramatic racial confrontations of the last third of the twentieth century. The response to the crises in policing offers more insight into the capability of the Dallas governance system to adapt to the changing conditions of urban life. The Police and Civic Culture: Making the City Safe for Commerce From the earliest days of Charter government, the police were critical to the maintenance of the Dallas civic culture. Police 136 Redesigning Policing 137 corruption during Klan control of city government sullied the image of Dallas. The business oligarchy that engineered the council-manager charter reform placed a high priority on the creation of a professional and incorruptible police force. Dallas became one of the first U.S. cities to require some college education for its officers, and it established one of the southwest’s first police academies. Texas law prohibited police from organizing to bargain collectively or to strike, constraining their ability to organize an effective employee union. Under the charter, the city manager has the sole power to appoint and dismiss all department heads, including the police chief. The charter also restricts the ability of individual council members to communicate with any city employee other than the city manager on administrative or operational matters, and helps to insulate police officers and commanders from “parochial” pressures. Though generally committed to a public sector limited to municipal housekeeping, the value of minimal services never applied to the police force. By 1998 it included 2,845 sworn officers, with an operating budget of $227 million, far surpassing that of any other city department. In the Dallas scheme of limited government, order was the one necessary function; “public safety” was the only sacrosanct department. The police protected life and property, and people of property protected the police. In a government of anonymous factotums, the City Manager and Chief of Police were about the only bureaucrats with widely recognizable names. And although the chief served at the manager’s pleasure, a chief popular with powerful business leaders and the rank and file of the department achieved a degree of autonomy that made him almost an equal of his nominal boss. Some chiefs, such as Jesse Curry, the incumbent at the time of the Kennedy assassination, attained celebrity status. Until the late 1980s, all chiefs rose through the department ’s ranks, contributing to solidarity among police that reached from the street to headquarters. This combined with a unique mission and paramilitary organization to create an 138 Chapter 6 organizational culture that distinguished the police from other departments of city government. Although no longer “political” in the old-fashioned patronage ways of the city commission, the police also gained autonomy based on bonds established between the officers and the clientele they served. Merchants were solicitous of police , encouraging them to visit or pass by their establishments while on patrol. Off-duty police officers were frequently employed as security guards for businesses and for community or private events, armed and in uniform. The department and police associations organized youth groups and sports leagues, and participated in school and neighborhood-based safety, anti-crime, and drug education programs. Police who were injured or killed in line of duty inspired spontaneous outpourings of official and public grief. Incidents of valor by police officers were celebrated at high civic occasions. Jurors and judges usually accorded a high degree of deference to police witnesses, accepting their testimony as highly credible. The chief and organized officers capitalized on this public support and their image as “The Thin Blue Line” that divided civil society from chaos...