Dallas Manages a Decrease in Violent Crime

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: The United States is experiencing a rise in violent crime at home, with 12 major cities breaking annual homicide records last year. Bucking that trend though is Dallas, Texas, where the murder rate decreased by 13 percent last year. And that makes the Dallas mayor, Eric Johnson, an interesting and important guest, as Michel Martin discovers now.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Mayor Johnson, thank you so much for talking with us.

MAYOR ERIC JOHNSON (D-DALLAS, TX): Absolutely. I’m pleased to be here. Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: Violent incidents in Dallas had gone up almost 22 percent between 2018 and 2020. By the end of 2021, the murder rate had dropped 13 percent and arrests were down 11 percent. Cities around the country, locales around the country inching up before the pandemic, but really escalating during the pandemic. So, really, Dallas is an outlier in this. Your results are starting to get attention. So, tell me what some of the things are that you think have been working.

JOHNSON: I want to be clear about something. We’re not taking a victory lap here. Crime is hard to get down sustainably. It’s hard to maintain year over year these types of decreases. So, we are working very hard and keeping on our eye on the goal of being the safest large city in America. So, this isn’t a victory lap. This is a mission accomplished situation. But we have had good success over the past year, and you can’t have great success without having good success first. What we did was this. We said there are two halves to this problem, and both have to be very aggressively focused on. The first half is your police department. You really do have to look and see, first and foremost, do you have the right police chief? We hired a new police chief who started on the job in February of 2021, Eddie Garcia. We hired him from San Jose. Without being asked, he went to criminologists at the University of Texas at San Antonio and said, I need a plan for reducing violent crime in the city of Dallas that is Dallas- specific and just tell me what I need to do. So, he is not afraid to look at data and to consult academics. He’s not afraid of the science. He’s not shooting from the hip and going with his gut. He’s saying, you know, I have been a cop for 25 years, I know how to get crime down. He immediately humbled himself and said, what does the science say about this? That’s a really important trait to have in your police chief. And we have a crime plan now that’s not merely humoring the mayor but is very data centric and is focused on the — we have broken the city into over 100,000 microgrids and have pinpointed the grids that are responsible for the bulk of the violent crime in the city. It’s astonishing what you find when you look at our data. What you find is that out of 100,000 grids, 10 percent of the crime in the city is attributable to 50, 5-0, of those grids. Those 100,000 grids, and 50 of them account for 10 percent of the crime. So, he said, that’s where we’re going to target our efforts and that’s where we’re going to enhance our presence and we’re going to start trying to make sure that we apprehend known criminals and people who are actually, you know, out, you know, evading arrest. And so, this isn’t a stop and frisk type of operation. This is going after known wanted criminals and focusing our deterrence in those areas.

MARTIN: Can I stop you right there, though? When you hear targeting, you can see where some people’s hackles will be raised. I mean, you saw that in New York City, for example, under that stop and frisk policy, more black and brown young men were stopped and frisked than actually live in New York City. Which means that people were stopped multiple times, right, in this specific demographic, who had nothing to do with the problem at hand.

JOHNSON: Right.

MARTIN: How do you, you know, engage and sort of focusing on the areas where you see without harassing people who are just trying to go about their business?

JOHNSON: I was very concerned about that, extremely concerned about that. And I talked to the police chief before the plan was implemented and said, this is not going to be stop and frisk. And he said, oh, absolutely not. And here is what I would point you to, which is, I think, maybe the most extraordinary fact about this. You know, everyone around the country is focused on the reduction. You know what? In those targeted areas, arrests went down. They went down. We have actually arrested — we have reduced the crime and arrested fewer people. Think about that. There are fewer people who actually got touched by the police and arrested in those areas than before the plan.

MARTIN: So how did it work? What did they do?

JOHNSON: Again, so, this was about — was about proactive policing and enhancing the presence to deter crime. This wasn’t about arresting your way out of the problem and this wasn’t about stop and frisk, but this was about making sure that we put the police assets, the squad cars, you know, illuminating areas with that police presence to deter people from engaging in activity in the first place. This was to deter activity and to make sure we were working to find out, you know, who are the people who are out right now with warrants that are actually wanted known criminals that are repeat criminals in these areas who are literally, right now, evading the law and bringing them to justice. So, this wasn’t about targeting, you know, innocent folks who fit a profile. This was about going after the known criminals. So, it’s —

MARTIN: And why wasn’t that happening before?

JOHNSON: Yes. You know, it’s amazing what low morale can do to a department. In Dallas, our pay had lagged so far behind our surrounding communities, our officers were underpaid. Their pension had been a mess for years. We just sort of put a fix to that within the past couple years. But we saw officers leaving our department in droves.

MARTIN: Around the country, a lot of people are attributing low morale to the Black Lives Matter movement. You know, this is kind of what you’re hearing from a lot of the union reps. They’re saying, oh, these demonstrations, people don’t have respect for the police. That’s why morale is low and that’s why crime is up. What I think I’m hearing you saying is, actually, it’s like a little bit more basic because people’s pay was lousy and their working conditions were terrible.

JOHNSON: Yes. Pretty much, yes. And so, no, for us, it predated anything having to do with Black Lives Matter. It doesn’t have to do with — we didn’t take care of our business with our pension. We allowed our salaries to lag the surrounding areas and officers were leaving the department and the folks who were left, frankly, were not as motivated to go out and do their jobs and to do their jobs with a level of professionalism that you need in that profession. It’s really — it’s amazing when you start to dig into this stuff. People actually act more professionally and take their job more seriously. I didn’t say they do it more aggressively. That’s actually a product of being frustrated and not wanting to do your job to the best of your ability because you don’t have the motivation. You treat folks professionally, you pay them the way they’re supposed to, you show them you value them through their employee benefits, they actually perform better. This new chief came in and almost immediately the morale turned around. The — everyone in that department right now seems to be on the same page in supporting his plan. And so, here’s the —

MARTIN: Let me stop you right here, though. You came out very hard against the defund the police movement. OK. Very strongly about, you know, op-eds, public speeches. Why do you think that matters? Is it in part because — I mean, just talk to me about why you felt that was important?

JOHNSON: I’m so glad you asked me that because, you know, I did take that stance. I took it when there was still a debate about it. I feel like almost, at this point, which oddly you’d almost agree that no one wants to defend that position anymore, it seems like. Everyone sort of walked back or walk away from the defund the police, you know, the language, the policies that went along with it, because there were people in our city, and I know in others, that were arguing for in Dallas, I think the call was for a 60 percent reduction in the police budget, 40 percent to 60 percent. I can’t remember it. It was something around half at least. You know, so, you’re not hearing that as much anymore.

MARTIN: Well, forgive me, you’re not hearing that as much among people like yourself who have operational responsibilities. I mean, I think the rest of us still feel that way.

JOHNSON: Look, I’m sure they feel that way, the activists. But I’m saying, I’m not — they’re not in city hall anymore. I mean, like, we could see them in front of city hall, we used to see them coming to the meetings to speak on the topic. You don’t see them as much anymore. Why? You know, why did I take that position? Why did I feel so strongly about it? It has to do with how I grew up and what I believe I know about the communities that directly deal with the violence. I was never saying that we shouldn’t reform police departments, that we shouldn’t improve police departments. I have been saying that for a long time. I have a 10-year record in the legislature that anybody who cared to look could see has been a very reform-minded legislative record when it comes to the police. But what I knew, the defund the police movement at the time was getting wrong was in the middle of violent crime uptick like we were having, you didn’t need any type of, you know, drastic reduction in police budgets like a 40 percent, 50 percent cut, you needed to continue to go down the path like we were in Dallas of increased transparency and supporting oversight, community oversight boards and things like that. I’m saying guys, it’s our cousins and our sisters and brothers who live in these communities who are dealing with this violence. Like, this violence really is disproportionately impacting African-Americans, particularly African-American men, and these communities are tired. And what they are asking for, and I wasn’t guessing, it’s because I’ve actually talked to my constituents, they were saying, we want better policing. And we would like to see a greater police presence. We just don’t want to be jacked up by the police. We don’t want to be mistreated by the police. So, there was never this outcry from within communities of color and lower income communities where the crime was occurring for the police to leave.

MARTIN: It is unfortunately a fact that too many police departments have evidence of people with white supremacist attitudes in them. I mean, whether these are social media postings, whether it’s in sort of groups that they are attracted to, we have talked about whether the police chief is the right one. Have you asked yourself the question of whether the officers in the cars and on the ground, are they the right ones? Have you asked yourself that question?

JOHNSON: I have, and that’s something that, you know, I’m proud to say that our new police chief has already had to let some folks go. He’s shown a willingness to terminate some people. And that’s another trait I think that you need in a police chief. The real-time to address that, and we need to do better at it in Dallas and every department, is on the front end. You know, Chris Rock had some pretty funny things to say in a comedy routine once about this, but he was right. Policing is not some profession that’s different like — than every other in the world where you don’t get what you pay for. You get what you pay for, and police are like everything else in terms of you really need to take seriously who you’re hiring and treat this profession seriously. We do the same — we make the same mistake in this country with teachers, with police officers. Like, we want people to be miracle workers. We want someone who has got, you know, the communication skills of Oprah and, you know, the de-escalation skills of, you know, a psychiatrist, and, you know, also is brave as, you know, as a member of our military, but — oh, but also, as kind and gentle as a minister. And like, we want them be all these things, and you think you can get them for $40,000 a year, which is what we were paying our officers. We’re paying $45,000 a year. And I mean, it doesn’t work. You’re not going to get the quality you need. So, I’m not saying just give police departments whatever they want. I’m saying you have to pay a decent salary with decent benefits, and you need to, on the front end, be screening and looking for things like racial bias and things like that. Things we can actually test for and look into. And then, they need to be trained on an ongoing basis on subconscious bias.

MARTIN: Let’s talk about some of the non-policing aspects of your policy initiatives here.

JOHNSON: First of all, I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to speak to this. I do think this is the secret sauce, if there is one. You know, long before our new chief even arrived, when we were starting to see the uptick in violent crime, when I flipped office, one of the first things that happened is I ended up going to the funeral of a little girl who got shot in her — playing in her living room by a stray bullet between some folks who were having a rap feud or something like that, and I promised her and her family, I said, I’m going to figure out what we, us, here in church, in this community can do to help improve these situations. I said, I’m going to put a task force together of people from the community, and I want no law enforcement on it at all. They came back with four recommendations, and we funded all four.

MARTIN: Which are?

JOHNSON: They said, number one, you need to remediate the blight in these communities. There’s — these communities have abandoned vacant lots that no one is taking care of, and it’s a haven for criminal activity. Clean up the community. Clean up the neighborhood. Do your job, City of Dallas. Help us clean up these lots. So, a blight remediation was on the list. Lighting improvements, if you can believe it. Lighting improvements were on the list. They said, you know what, you know where a lot of crimes are occurring? In places where the city is either doesn’t have street lights or the street lights don’t work. Light the city up. Light up the darkness. Like, light the places where the criminality is happening. That’s on us, too. So, that was on the list. The third thing that was on the list, violence interrupter programs. They said, that is working in places where they’re implementing that, where you’re finding people who are from the community, in many cases, formerly incarcerated folks, and getting them since they know the folks in the community and they know the problem before they actually turn into a violent conflict, they know when a beef is turning into something, and let them defuse the beef before it turns into something where now law enforcement has to get involved. And the fourth thing was, get your public school system to invest in a social emotional educational curriculum where people learn how to resolve conflicts from a young age in school without resorting to violence. School district agreed to implement a program, social emotional learning, check. The other three programs, Dallas (INAUDIBLE) put nearly $5 million in one budget cycle into those. And that all took place in 2021.

MARTIN: What difference do you think your race plays in this? The fact that you are yourself a black man?

JOHNSON: I think it’s — God, that’s a good question. I mean, because I do think it plays a role. And it cuts so many different ways. I think on the one hand, because this isn’t a perception, this is a reality thing. Because I am black and I have the lived experience of being a black man in the United States, I mean, I’m a big dude. I’m African-American. And that makes some people uncomfortable. And that’s unfortunate. And that plays a role in how some people — because police are human beings, and some of the perceptions they have about who’s criminal, who is more prone to violence. I’m aware of that. And I have been, like I said, as a public servant, trying to do what I can legislatively to address some of those issues. Not every African-American grew up poor. We need to get past that myth. And not every African-American grew up in a rough neighborhood where violence is an issue. I happen to be one who did, though. Like, I grew up in the roughest part of Dallas. People got shot. People got killed. People were in gangs. People died before their 18th birthday. I literally came of age in the most violent period in American history. It’s the years between 1990 and 1994, which correspond exactly with my freshman year of high school and my senior year of high school, was the most violent four-year period in American history. People were just getting killed left and right in communities like mine during the height of the drug wars and things like that. It was terrible. So, I have seen first-hand where we could be. We’re not there. We have to get there by gradual escalation, and I’m trying to nip it in the bud, and trying to nip it in the bud without overly policing, overincarcerating folks, and we’re doing that. It’s actually working.

MARTIN: Mayor Eric Johnson, thank you so much for talking with us. I do hope we’ll talk again.

JOHNSON: I do, too. Great, great talking to you.