The Dallas Police Department is Hardly Donna Summer

Recently on the local news, there was a report about how the city of Dallas' police department was in the process of considering/passing a ruling that they would no longer take the time to respond to what they consider "petty crimes."

According to their statistics, they received 104,529 petty theft calls last year alone (roughly 8,700+ per month). These thefts include: cell phones, stolen bikes and highway trash (i.e. something large in the road/highway that could affect traffic). Their reasoning behind this thought process is that they "just don't have time to handle these sort of things." Instead, the victim of the crime would be responsible for filling out their own crime report and filing it with the police department.

Well, first off, I don't live in Dallas, so this isn't going to affect me either way, UNLESS this gets passed and the Arlington police department thinks they can get away with it too. Secondly, I say "Tough tacos!" I have to agree with Dallas resident, Chad Waldrop, who responded by saying "I don't think they should put the responsibility on us. That's their job." Here, here! It's not like these people are volunteers that aren't getting paid. They claim they'll have more time to "work their beat," thus solving more crimes, if they are allowed to bypass this part of their job. To this "reasoning" I say "Bull hockey!" I watch the news and read the newspaper. The city's crime rate was the highest among nine U.S. cities, including Houston, with more than a million residents for the seventh consecutive year in 2004, according to police statistics.

Most of the crimes reported involved burglaries, auto break-ins of similar nonviolent property theft. But the city's murder rate crept up to No. 2 among the cities, with 20 murders per 100,000 residents, behind only Philadelphia, which reported 22 murders per 100,000 residents.

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