FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 31, 2016
Contact:
Collette Flanagan, 214-989-8888,[email protected]
Sara Mokuria, 214-454-3980,[email protected]
John Fullinwider, 214-683-2493,[email protected]
Mothers Against Police Brutality (MAPB)- Statement:
1.
Fielding Texas state troopers to patrol Dallas communities is a bad idea whose time has definitely not come. Governor Abbott's proposal is actually an election year political ploy that is being naively received by Dallas officials as if it were a serious component of a plan to reduce violence and homicide in the city.
The primary duties of Texas state troopers are enforcing traffic laws, mainly on highways in rural areas, and regulations governing commercial vehicles. The jurisdiction, everyday duties, and organizational culture of the Texas Department of Public Safety are very different from those of a big city police department. The skills and attitudes that make for a good trooper working in a typical DPS context do not readily transfer into good policing in urban, primarily African American and Latino, neighborhoods. Writing tickets in a West Texas highway speed trap is a fundamentally different job that patrolling Dallas streets.
"We don't want hired outside guns to police our neighborhoods, where our husbands and wives go back and forth to work every day and where our children play innocently," said
Collette Flanagan, who founded MAPB in 2013 after her unarmed son, Clinton, was shot to death by a Dallas police officer. "Governor Abbott's troopers are not familiar with our neighborhoods, and they may much too quickly resort to excessive and deadly force."
2.
The increasing unrest in the Dallas Police Department is itself a threat to public safety and will likely have grave consequences for people living in so-called "high crime" areas.
"Angry cops working shifts they don't like in areas they fear is a recipe for disaster," said
Sara Mokuria, a co-founder of MAPB whose father was killed by Dallas police. "We already have a problem with unaccountable, unprofessional officers who use force first, instead of de-escalation techniques that can defuse a tense situation."
MAPB calls on all officers, but especially those in the Dallas Police Association and Dallas Fraternal Order of Police, to do their jobs with proper respect for the lives and rights of the people they are sworn to protect.
"Whether officers dislike or disagree with Chief David Brown doesn't matter," said
John
Fullinwider, a co-founder of MAPB
. "They need to put the politics aside and approach their new assignments in the spirit of community cooperation, which after all is needed to prevent and solve crimes. We disagree with Chief Brown on many issues, particularly his handling of the unjust use of deadly force. But officers have a job to do. This is not optional."
3.
An uptick in crime may require extra patrols - for example, requiring more officers working at night. But this does not mean that officers can ignore citizens' rights, or patrol and respond in ways that endanger the public.
"Put aside your anger and resentment, and your prejudices, before you come to our neighborhoods," said Mrs. Flanagan. "We need personal safety and security like people in all neighborhoods, the same as wealthy homeowners in Preston Hollow. But we will not tolerate more shooting deaths by trigger happy cops that have no conscience nor care for our children. They have killed our youth like animals in the street, and the Internal Affairs Department, the Chief, the District Attorney, and Dallas County Grand Juries have found all fatal Dallas police shootings to be justified for the last 43 years."
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