Dallas Police Department

“ As we noted there, the State's failure to prosecute individuals under section 21.06 creates a dilemma: individuals alleging that they are harmed by the statute are unable to attack its constitutionality because of the State's refusal to enforce it. In this cause, England, who was prevented from completing the job application process with the Dallas Police Department, has actually suffered the concrete injury that the plaintiffs in Morales alleged they would suffer. England, like the plaintiffs in Morales, has no adequate remedy at law. ”

“ Speculation.—Tippit was driving alone in his police car even though standing orders for police in Dallas were that radio cars of the type Tippit was driving must have two policemen in them.
Commission finding.—Dallas police officials stated that department policy required about 80 percent of the patrolmen on the day shift, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., to work alone. ”

“ How stupid can people be? Then it is premeditated. You don’t do things like that. Why wait for an investigation? Sure, it would have been a wonderful thing to have done but you can’t, you don’t know what is in the other man’s mind. I blame everything on the stupid Dallas police from every angle, even from that angle up there. They knew Oswald was in town, why didn’t they grab him. That is my opinion. They blame everything on Jack, the scapegoat, the poor guy has got to take it for the whole police department down there. You know that is the truth and I mean it. ”

“ Mr. Ruby. Yes. You see, I’ve been in Dallas 17 years and yet suddenly I get involved in a very serious crime and I was very popular with the police department and a lot of other people, and the irony is—it took a complete reverse of that, because of various suspicions, nature, and so on.
I wonder if you follow what I’m trying to bring out? Maybe there’s something we can cover in that area.
Mr. Alexander. Jack, let’s cover it this way. “Were any of your relations with the police department improper?”
Mr. Ruby. No—you, like doing business or something or other?
Mr. Alexander. Yes?
Mr. Ruby. ”

“ So the next day they send up to pick me up and help me find a place and job.
Mr. Hubert. When you say “they”——
Mrs. Rich. Meaning the police department of Dallas.
Mr. Hubert. What particular individuals?
339 Mrs. Rich. I don’t recall exactly who sent them up. I cannot remember the guy’s name. Really. I don’t believe he is any longer with them, I understand.
Mr. Hubert. In any case, some person from the police department came to get you the next day?
Mrs. Rich. Yes. Subsequently, one Mr. Paul Rayburn, detective, juvenile, came to pick me up, along with his partner, Detective House. ”

“ To paraphrase Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, let us use our words carefully. Let us act with unity, not division. As Dallas Police Chief David Brown—one of the leading chiefs in America—said, “There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city, all I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens.”
As Americans, we are wounded by all of these deaths. It’s on all of us to stand up, to speak out about disparities in our criminal justice system — just as it’s on all of us to stand up for the police who protect us in our communities every day. ”

“ In another case involving alleged misconduct at a retail store that we have already described, the store's district manager told the commander he did not want an investigation—despite how concerned he was by video footage showing an officer training his gun on two store employees as they took out the trash—because he wanted to "stay on the good side" of the police.
Even when individuals do report misconduct, there is a significant likelihood it will not be treated as a complaint and investigated. ”

“ FPD fails to adequately supervise officers or review their enforcement actions. While FPD collects vehicle-stop data because it is required to do so by state law, it collects no reliable or consistent data regarding pedestrian stops, even though it has the technology to do so. [13] In Ferguson, officers will sometimes make an arrest without writing a report or even obtaining an incident number, and hundreds of reports can pile up for months without supervisors reviewing them. Officers' uses of force frequently go unreported, and are reviewed only laxly when reviewed at all. ”

“ Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority. They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence. Police supervisors and leadership do too little to ensure that officers act in accordance with law and policy, and rarely respond meaningfully to civilian complaints of officer misconduct. The result is a pattern of stops without reasonable suspicion and arrests without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment ”

“ FPD's Weak Oversight of Use of Force Reflects its Lack of Concern for Whether Officer Conduct Is Consistent with the Law or Promotes Police Legitimacy FPD's use-of-force review system is particularly ineffectual. Force frequently is not reported. When it is, there is rarely any meaningful review. Supervisors do little to no investigation; either do not understand or choose not to follow FPD's use-of-force policy in analyzing officer conduct; rarely correct officer misconduct when they find it ”

“ Even relatively routine misconduct by Ferguson police officers can have significant consequences for the people whose rights are violated. For example, in the summer of 2012, a 32-year-old African-American man sat in his car cooling off after playing basketball in a Ferguson public park. An officer pulled up behind the man's car, blocking him in, and demanded the man's Social Security number and identification. ”

“ When implemented fully, community policing creates opportunities for officers and community members to have frequent, positive interactions with each other, and requires officers to partner with communities to solve particular public safety problems that, together, they have decided to address. Research and experience show that community policing can be more effective at crime prevention and at making people feel safer. ”

“ Force at times appeared to be used as punishment for noncompliance with an order that lacked legal authority. Even where FPD officers have legal grounds to stop or arrest, however, they frequently take actions that ratchet up tensions and needlessly escalate the situation to the point that they feel force is necessary. One illustrative instance from October 2012 began as a purported check on a pedestrian's well-being and ended with the man being taken to the ground, drive-stunned twice, and arrested for Manner of Walking in Roadway and Failure to Comply. ”

“ Frequently, officers arrest people for conduct that plainly does not meet the elements of the cited offense. For example, in November 2013, an officer approached five African-American young people listening to music in a car. ”

“ In recent years, FPD has moved away from the modest community policing efforts it previously had implemented, reducing opportunities for positive police-community interactions, and losing the little familiarity it had with some African-American neighborhoods. The confluence of policing to raise revenue and racial bias thus has resulted in practices that not only violate the Constitution and cause direct harm to the individuals whose rights are violated, but also undermine community trust, especially among many African Americans. ”

“ Even when force is reported, the force review process falls so short of FPD's policy requirements that it is ineffective at improving officer safety or ensuring that force is used properly. First, and most significantly, supervisors almost never actually investigate force incidents. In almost every case, supervisors appear to view force investigations as a ministerial task, merely summarizing the involved officers' version of events and sometimes relying on the officers' offense report alone. ”

“ At times, FPD officers use wanteds not merely in spite of a lack of probable cause, but because they lack probable cause. In December 2014, a Ferguson detective investigating a shooting emailed a county prosecutor to see if a warrant for a suspect could be obtained, since "a lot of state agencies won't act on a wanted." ”

“ Given this lack of data, we are unable to determine whether African Americans are disproportionately the subjects of pedestrian stops, or the rate of searches, arrests, or other post-pedestrian stop outcomes. We note, however, that during our investigation we have spoken with not only black community members who have been stopped by FPD officers, but also non-black community members and employees of local businesses who have observed FPD conduct pedestrian stops of others, all of whom universally report that pedestrian stops in Ferguson almost always involve African-American youth. ”

“ We commend City officials for beginning to take steps to address some of the concerns we have already raised. Nonetheless, these changes are only a small part of the reform necessary. Addressing the deeply embedded constitutional deficiencies we found demands an entire reorientation of law enforcement in Ferguson. The City must replace revenue-driven policing with a system grounded in the principles of community policing and police legitimacy, in which people are equally protected and treated with compassion, regardless of race. ”

“ Community policing and related community engagement strategies provide the opportunity for officers and communities to work together to identify the causes of crime and disorder particular to their community, and to prioritize law enforcement efforts. See Community Policing Defined 1–16 (U.S. Dep't of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2014) . The focus of these strategies—in stark contrast to Ferguson's current law enforcement approach—is on crime prevention rather than on making arrests. ”

“ Increasing a police department's racial diversity does not necessarily increase community trust or improve officer conduct. There appear to be many reasons for this. One important reason is that African-American officers can abuse and violate the rights of African-American civilians, just as white officers can. And African-American officers who behave abusively can undermine community trust just as white officers can. Our investigation indicates that in Ferguson, individual officer behavior is largely driven by a police culture that focuses on revenue generation and is infected by race bias. ”

“ Mr. Ruby. No.
Mr. Herndon. All right. The questions will be: “Do you still operate the Carousel Club? Were you on the sidewalk at the time Lieutenant Pierce’s car stopped on the ramp exit? Did you previously live in Chicago? Did you enter the jail by walking through an alleyway? Are your parents alive? Did you walk past the guard at the time Lieutenant Pierce’s car was parked on the ramp exit? Did you ever make a false insurance claim? Did you talk with any Dallas police officers on Sunday, November 24, prior to the shooting of Oswald?” ”

“ Public security organs do not require court-approved warrants to detain suspects under their administrative detention powers. After detention the procuracy can approve formal arrest without court approval. According to the law, in routine criminal cases police can unilaterally detain persons for up to 37 days before releasing them or formally placing them under arrest. After a suspect is arrested, the law allows police and prosecutors to detain a person for up to seven months while public security organs further investigate the case. ”

“ In practice, not all arrests are given incident numbers, meaning supervisors may never know to review them. These systemic deficiencies in oversight are consistent with an approach to law enforcement in which productivity and revenue generation, rather than lawful policing, are the priority. Thus, even as commanders exhort line supervisors to more closely supervise officer activity, they perpetuate the dynamics that discourage meaningful supervision. ”

“ FPD officers' swift, at times automatic, resort to using ECWs against individuals who typically have committed low-level crimes and who pose no immediate threat violates the Constitution. As the Eighth Circuit held in 2011, an officer uses excessive force and violates clearly established Fourth Amendment law when he deploys an ECW against an individual whose crime was minor and who is not actively resisting, attempting to flee, or posing any imminent danger to others. ”

“ In addition, FPD records suggest a tendency to use unnecessary force against vulnerable groups such as people with mental health conditions or cognitive disabilities, and juvenile students. Furthermore, as discussed in greater detail in Part III.C. of this report, Ferguson's pattern of using excessive force disproportionately harms African-American members of the community. The overwhelming majority of force—almost 90%—is used against African Americans.
The use of excessive force by a law enforcement officer violates the Fourth Amendment. ”

“ African Americans are 68% less likely than others to have their cases dismissed by the Municipal Judge, and in 2013 African Americans accounted for 92% of cases in which an arrest warrant was issued. African Americans account for 96% of known arrests made exclusively because of an outstanding municipal warrant. These disparities are not the necessary or unavoidable results of legitimate public safety efforts. In fact, the practices that lead to these disparities in many ways undermine law enforcement effectiveness. ”