To keep 'moral high ground,' Dallas City Council opts to not use confiscated funds on police study
Filed under Dallas City Council at Nov 28
Corbett Smith, Staff Writer
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Dallas City Council members expressed trepidation Wednesday over using money that could have been taken from people suspected of — but not always charged with — wrongdoing.
But the council essentially sidestepped the question of whether it should use the proceeds from assets that authorities allege were involved in crimes.
The council had been set to vote Wednesday to use $250,000 from a federal confiscated-assets fund to help pay for a long-awaited $500,000 police staffing study, which police officials say is needed as they grapple with a shrinking department and rising response times.
But City Council member Philip Kingston pulled the contract from the consent agenda during Wednesday's meeting. He spoke out vehemently against the use of civil asset forfeiture, which has been under fire nationally from civil liberties groups, which call it government overreach.
"People do get deprived of their property, they never get it back, and we spend it," Kingston said. "This stuff is really, really immoral."
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The council approved the staffing study but opted to pay its share with emergency fund money instead of confiscated-asset funds. The other half of the money will come from the W.W. Caruth Jr. Foundation, which often supports public safety causes.
Police Chief U. Renee Hall said the city holds a balance of about $11 million in state and federally confiscated funds, which can be used only to supplement certain aspects of the department's budget.
Over the past decade, Dallas has received between $1.9 million and $4.7 million annually in confiscated funds from state and federal sources.
Mayor Mike Rawlings and other council members asked that the council's Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee take up the issue in the coming months. The committee will try to get a better grasp of the make-up of the forfeiture funds and whether the council should use them.
Council members Sandy Greyson, Rickey Callahan, Scott Griggs, Kevin Felder and Omar Narvaez also expressed concerns about using confiscated funds. They asked how the $250,000 was acquired, whether it was obtained in a case or cases in which someone had been found guilty, whether civil asset forfeiture or criminal forfeiture was used, and whether someone would be able to contest the seizure if the city spent the money.
"With the commingling of those funds, I think that's a dangerous process that doesn't allow us to have the moral high ground," Callahan said.
Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires a conviction, civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to confiscate cash and property that is suspected of being connected in some way to criminal activity — without the need of a conviction or even a criminal charge.
Before Callahan offered an amendment to use a different funding source, the vote on the staffing study had appeared headed for a delay.
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The police staffing study will now be conducted by KPMG over a six-month period. The firm will analyze the department's current staffing levels, ratios for patrol and nonpatrol divisions, the current shift length and the best uses of the department's manpower.
Both Hall and Executive Assistant Chief David Pughes urged the council not to delay funding the study, which will begin immediately. The department has lost hundreds of officers in recent years.
"This is important for the Police Department," the chief said. "We hear each and every day that our manpower isn't sufficient for the city of Dallas. We want to be better, and this will help us to be better."