Police Chief Eddie Garcia continues to make rounds throughout Dallas, visiting neighborhoods to discuss crime intervention and community collaboration.
Tuesday, Garcia met with residents in the East Dallas community of Buckner Terrace on the heels of what’s been top of mind for the last week – the Uvalde school shooting.
“We are with you; we are partners in this. So, what we really need to do is work collectively and together,” Garcia said in an opening statement to those in attendance.
Garcia met with the members of the community in the Buckner Terrace neighborhood at Edna Rowe Elementary school. Naturally, much of Tuesday’s discussion centered around safety in schools and other public spaces.
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Ernestine Rhynes, a 19-year resident and retired educator, said that her concern for the children she still tutors brought her to the meeting.
“I still do tutoring,” Rhynes said. “So, I can just see those little faces. They’re babies. They’re 10, 11. They’re babies.”
Garcia, who has SWAT experience himself, said measures are in the works to address those legitimate concerns.
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“Over the summer you’re going to start seeing some trainer models between ourselves, school districts, Dallas ISD and other entities,” he said.
He said the training session will not only focus on schools but on other spaces such as malls, movie theaters and places of worship.
Even with ambitious goals, and crime rates that are down in the city, Garcia admitted that department staffing is still a concern.
“The city has allowed us to hire 250 officers this year, 250 next year, which sounds like a great number. But my attrition is 200 a year, roughly,” Garcia said to those in attendance.
In September, the city approved a $4.35 million budget which included money to hire more officers and restore police overtime pay. Still, Garcia says the building of the department is a process.
“I can’t snap my fingers and get 500 officers today because we can’t assimilate them that quickly,” said Garcia. “And so, we need to grow at a pace that we can absorb, and we are growing.”
