DALLAS — With American cities still grappling with calls to rethink the role of police in the wake of several police shootings of Black people, including George Floyd, it’s no surprise public safety has emerged as a key issue in Dallas’ City Council election campaigns.
In East Dallas’ District 9, public safety has become fodder for what one candidate says is a misinformation campaign.
Paula Blackmon, who is running for re-election to represent District 9 for another two-year term, said she became the target of a misinformation flyer campaign from a group called Keep Dallas Safe. Mailers with the organization’s name and logo on it have appeared in hundreds of District 9 voters’ mailboxes recently, accusing Blackmon of denying that she defunded the police in last year’s $3.8 billion city budget.
The flyer shows a photo of Blackmon laid over an image of what appears to be protesters during the Black Lives Matter movements last summer, following Floyd’s killing by a police officer in Minneapolis.
The Keep Dallas Safe flyer also said Blackmon “stands for HIGH crime,” claiming violent crime has increased in her district by 50%.
Blackman told the Dallas Observer the Keep Dallas Safe flyer is part of its “lies and misinformation” campaign against her. Crimes in her district are not up 50% as the leaflets claim, she said. In fact, crimes committed against people are down by 5%, while crimes against property are down 12%, Blackmon told the Dallas Observer.
“We understand Paula Blackmon is upset that our flyers truthfully expose her record of being the leader of the effort to defund the Dallas Police Department, but we plan to continue to use every possible medium to let Dallas residents know the record of their elected officials on the issue of public safety,” the email from Keep Dallas Safe read in response to a request for comment about the flyers. “Councilwoman Blackmon may try to run from her record by claiming to be an advocate of public safety, but her choices show otherwise.”
The incident comes as the state Legislature is considering a bill that would require voter approval before local governments could cut their law enforcement budgets. Gov. Greg Abbott last year criticized the city of Austin for approving a budget cut to the police department and has shown support for curtailing local government’s ability to “defund the police.”
Last year, when the city governments of many major American metropolitan cities were holding heated discussions about how and if to defund their police budgets in the wake of the death of George Floyd, Dallas City Council members voted to keep police funding intact from the previous year, minus a controversial $7 million cut in police overtime spending.
The debate on the $7 million was the most contentious of the council’s budgeting discussions even though it ended up being a tiny fraction of the police department’s $500 million total budget.
The council’s approval of the $500 million Dallas Police Department budget came despite calls from local activist groups to cut more than $200 million to reallocate it to other community services.
Blackmon was one of 11 council members who voted in favor of that $7 million cut, and which now appears to be what earned her the ire of Keep Dallas Safe.
Keep Dallas Safe is listed as a nonprofit political organization on its Facebook page, where it describes its mission as being “Dedicated to preserving a safe and prosperous community, supporting responsible law enforcement, and preventing unrest from taking root in Dallas.”
The organization lists how each of the Dallas City Council members voted on the $7 million budget cut to police overtime. But it takes a particular point with Blackmon in a letter opposing her re-election bid, saying she “masterminded the cut of $7 million in the police overtime budget KNOWING (sic) that the possibility of civil unrest was coming.”
Dallas typically spends about 60% of its budget on public safety, including funding for the police, fire, and emergency services departments, as well for the court and jail systems.
Blackmon was elected in June 2019 to a two-year term on the council. District 9 includes parts of East Dallas and the communities around White Rock Lake. Blackmon faces two challengers in the May 1 election, John Botefuhr and Judy Kumar.
Fourteen seats on the Dallas City Council will be on the May 1 ballot this year. The fifteenth seat is the mayor and is currently held by Johnson, now in the middle of his first, four-year term. City Council members, which are nonpartisan by law, are elected for two-year terms and may serve a maximum of four consecutive terms.