Additional Community Feedback
Policing
“ I started paying attention to what ’ s going on around me . At the same time , something happened when this young lady got shot in Fort Worth at her own home . I used to call the police for everything , but I don ’ t feel comfortable anymore . I feel afraid to call the police , because I don ’ t want to be the victim of an accident . That concern made a difference in my life , and it hasn ’ t been the same since .”
“ If you give that there ’ s a disparity , I personally believe that the reason for it is simply the type of police work that is done today . It ’ s called ‘ Cops on Dots .’ I don ’ t know if you ’ ve heard that phrase before , but it ’ s when you put your higher concentration of police officers in the higher crime areas . Usually the higher reported crime areas of the City are the less-economically developed portions of the City , which are usually going to be minorities . So you ’ re going to have a higher concentration of contact with the people in that area .”
“ Always look for ways to improve but don ’ t let the actions of other cities affect what happens here in Arlington because it ’ s very easy to turn on the TV and see something going on in Minneapolis or wherever . These horrendous things have occurred and people try to tie that back to Arlington by saying , ‘ Well , we need to fix Arlington because of what happened in Philadelphia .” That ’ s simply not the case . Arlington is not perfect . We definitely have had our incidents in the past . But those were dealt with quickly .”
“ I ’ m not saying that mental evaluations need to be mandated , but I would like to see some kind of measuring mechanism because if you have an officer that is answering those high stress calls all the time , there needs to come a point where he probably needs to go talk to somebody about that .”
“ I had a similar incident in my years of experience . I pulled someone over for a traffic offense and smelled marijuana . He chose to run away . But I knew where he lived , so I did not shoot him . We are talking about lives here , and there is due process for people that run away .”
Our Arlington Police Department has been amazing . They respond whenever we call them with a concern or question . They give us advice . They have come by and given us ideas on how we can make our building more secure . The Police Chief was also very active , so I want to keep those kinds of relationships open in the future .
– an Arlington resident
Unity Council Report 83