The Dallas police chief on Monday briefly elaborated on his plan to bring in state resources to fight back against violent crime, particularly amid a huge upswing in domestic violence cases this year.
Police Chief David Brown told NBC 5 he is asking for state help in securing Texas Department of Public Safety Specialty Units to assist Dallas police in tracking down violent offenders.
The chief said he doesn't expect to see huge swells of state troopers patrolling Dallas streets in the next few weeks, but rather specialized DPS teams working with Dallas police units in tracking down suspects in high-risk warrant situations.
There are several DPS "Special Operations Group" units listed on the DPS website—including a state SWAT team and Special Response Team (SRT). Those teams in particular are trained to conduct high-risk warrant services.
In Dallas, there are about 800 family violence suspects with outstanding arrest warrants.
Brown and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings agree that the majority of family violence suspects are repeat offenders and have committed other crimes as well, beyond beating a woman or child, so getting a handle on that backlog of family violence warrants and putting those suspects in jail will help bring down a double-digit crime spike.
"If someone abuses someone once, more than likely it will happen again," said Genesis Women's Shelter CEO Jan Langbein.
Langbein notes that when an abused women calls 911—or a neighbor or witness, perhaps—an abuser often leaves home for a while so that he's not around when police show up to investigate the crime. Police fill out a warrant, but often the crime goes unsolved and the abuser avoids an arrest for the time being.
At the end of last week, Brown added close to 100 officers to his Domestic Violence Warrant Team—a group of officers dedicated to tracking down domestic-violence offenders.
"It is a scary proposition for any officer to go to a door, and know that there is a fight going on. First of all, what is happening? Secondly, are there weapons there that could be turned on him?" Rawlings said.
The mayor agrees bringing in extra state resources is a good idea.
"I think they can help in an auxiliary way, in a complimentary role. We've got to do the policing, and we will do the policing," Rawlings said. "But it's great to have someone say—is there anything we can do to help?"
Rawlings said he met with the police chief last week and the Dallas Police Association to discuss the plan of bringing in outside resources.
"The fact is we've got hundreds of warrants that need to be served and get these criminals off the streets," he said.
Rawlings said "in the next week or two" there will be a definitive blueprint for bringing in help from outside law enforcement agencies—DPS and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, for instance.
"We will have a strategy aligned by [mid-April]," he said. "But when it will start taking place, I don't know."
"There is no more important issue than this issue. We can't accept that abuse of women is normal, or routine," Brown said.
Tuesday afternoon at Dallas Police Headquarters, Brown is expected to meet with representatives from the sheriff’s department and DPS to review jurisdictional and legal issues, and available resources that can be deployed in Dallas.
The meeting comes in the middle of the annual Conference on Crimes Against Women happening this week in downtown Dallas.
Both Rawlings and Brown spoke at the meeting's opening convocation Monday morning.
About 1,700 people are attending the three-day event, including detectives, police officers, prosecutors, women's groups and support services from 49 states.
Robert White is the first assistant district attorney in Plaquemines Parish near New Orleans. He handles about 200 domestic violence cases a year.
The seasoned prosecutor said he learned things at the conference last year that helped him back home, so he wanted to return again.
"One thing I learned was about the nature of abuse against women and how it's likely to escalate," he said. "So, for example, women who are victims of strangulation and not killed are statistically eight-times more likely to become homicide victims. They will die of domestic violence."
He said learning statistics like that give him the motivation to aggressively prosecute certain cases – sometimes, even, if the victim isn't cooperative.
"You can never be frustrated at the victim, or angry at her," he said. "But I've learned you have to try and make [the criminal case] go fast, and you have to try and get as much information early on as you can so you can prosecute."
Representatives from many colleges and universities are also on hand at the event.
"Sexual assault, sexual awareness is something we're really trying to raise awareness of at college campuses. And how to support women who've been abused or assaulted and don't know where to turn to or what to do," said Dr. Precious Elmore-Sanders, the director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Oklahoma State University.
Break-out sessions over the next few days will help police learn the right questions to ask during investigations, and they'll help victims advocates learn the best practices to help women find the strength to take a stand.
