13 June 27 - July 3, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ences. In a statement provided to the Observer, TCA said any harassment, intimi- dation, sexually inappropriate comments or any other disrespectful or unkind behavior would be a violation of the school’s code of conduct and “does not represent the Chris- tian values” of the school. Squires said on multiple occasions she witnessed male students committing verbal and physical harassment against female stu- dents with no consequence. “I remember being in a majority male class, and a male classmate asking me if I was a feminist,” Candace Riggs, who gradu- ated from TCA in the early 2020s, told the Observer. “And [I remember] having the en- tire room look at me waiting for a response. I knew if I said no they would accept me into the class and if I said yes they would con- tinue to ignore me.” Riggs said female students faced inequi- ties that male students did not, such as time- consuming dress code checks, being pressured into signing celibacy promises and facing public ridicule for engaging in sexual behaviors. In Hank Harmon’s Bible class, specifically, she felt she was “made to feel beneath her male counterparts.” In the class, Hank often devolved into “crazy tangents,” Riggs said. Students who disagreed with his teachings were required to argue “directly from the Bible,” and only if he agreed with their interpretations. Riggs and Squires both recall being taught that homosexuality is a sin and that women were meant to be homemakers. Squires described the class as “very toxic,” led by a teacher who “could not be ques- tioned or challenged. “Even for an evangelical Christian school, he was out there,” Squires said. “[It was] abuse of his authority, abuse of God’s word, abuse of the Bible to try to coerce con- formity.” When Riggs learned of Matthew’s arrest, “it all clicked.” She doesn’t feel it’s a stretch that a culture that enforces female submis- sion and purity would create a man who ex- erts his own power over young women. “There were always moments in [Hank’s] class that I felt uncomfortable and unheard, as a woman,” Riggs said. “When I heard about Kanakuk and Matt, everything just kind of made sense to me, unfortunately. I kind of felt in the back of my head, while I was a student at TCA, that something was off. I could never put a word or a reason to it.” For Squires, who remembers Hank strictly enforcing “purity” behaviors with fe- male students, it feels like a “betrayal.” “You can just feel the hypocrisy of all of it,” Squires said. “I just don’t see how they couldn’t have known that this was going on. And that they would be enforcing these very strict standards of behavior on some stu- dents while turning a blind eye to what Matt was doing is deeply disturbing to me.” Dallas police said they have identified “additional victims” and “it is possible” Mat- thew Harmon will face additional charges. ▼ PUBLIC SAFETY FASTER THAN A PHOTOGRAPH DALLAS POLICE WANT RED LIGHT AND SPEEDING CAMERAS BACK. BY EMMA RUBY Y ou may have seen a study floating around earlier this year that de- clared Dallas one of the worst cities in the country when it comes to vehicular accidents. The Forbes survey ranked us third-highest for crashes involving a drunk driver and fourth for accidents caused by speeding. Not great, Dallas. Evidently, the Dallas Police Department doesn’t think it’s great either. City Council has been juggling discussions involving the city’s legislative priorities for the 2025 Texas legislative session, and in a recent public safety committee meeting, DPD asked for a seat at the table. This year is the first that the police de- partment has introduced its own set of legislative priorities to the council. Each item DPD brought to the committee was approved and will now go before the council for a final vote on the city’s priori- ties package. By introducing its legislative agenda to the council, DPD will now be able to have council members testify in Austin on behalf of the requests approved by the full council vote. Two of the items unanimously approved by the committee take new approaches to speeding and drunk driving. DPD plans to advocate for the reversal of a 2019 state law that prohibited the use of cameras that take photos of people speeding or running red lights. The vehicle’s owner would then receive a ticket in the mail. Dal- las police Lt. Julio Gonzalez, who has been leading the department’s legislative affairs program, told the council reinstating a speed camera program could help reduce fatalities and accidents on high-speed roadways and interstates. “I think we have to do this. I mean, we are all suffering, our whole community,” council member Gay Donnell Willis said. “We can’t put an officer on every street cor- ner to make people follow the law, so this technology, this is a way we can make peo- ple comply with the law and make our streets safer.” The cameras could be a solution to in- consistencies in the department’s traffic enforcement in recent years. Last Novem- ber, Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia told NBC 5 Investigates that short staffing and the need for police to respond to violent crime have resulted in lower levels of traf- fic enforcement since the pandemic. Garcia also said he believes officers are writing more warnings for drivers, as opposed to tickets. Speed cameras are currently legal in 19 states, according to the Governors High- way Safety Association, and while they are credited with reducing crashes by up to 54%, investigations into the camera’s uses in some cities — like Chicago, Miami and Wahington, D.C — have found a dispro- portionate impact on nonwhite motorists. According to ProPublica, homes in ZIP codes with a majority Black or Latino pop- ulation were twice as likely to receive tick- ets in the mail as homes in majority white neighborhoods. “We felt the brunt of it the way white people didn’t,” Olatunji Oboi Reed, a racial equity activist from Chicago, told Pro- Publica. The public safety committee did not discuss equity concerns related to the use of speed cameras, but council member Cara Mendelsohn said the expected out- comes voiced by Gonzalez are aligned with the city’s Vision Zero plan. The ini- tiative aims to dramatically decrease acci- dents resulting in fatalities and severe injuries by 2030. DPD is also petitioning for state law to once again allow DWI checkpoints, which were outlawed in Texas in 1991. Before it’s allowed, the state would need to develop a checkpoint procedure for local law enforce- ment to follow. Garcia told the committee that police presence on roadways is cur- rently increased during major holidays, but monitoring is done proactively and sobriety enforcement can be done only if an officer witnesses unsafe driving. “We need to be more present on our highways and freeways,” Garcia said. “When you look at other states that some- how can figure it out, we could probably fig- ure it out as well.” Gonzalez said that the Texas Police Chiefs Association has adopted DPD’s prior- ity list to use as a statewide template. “The issues that we are facing here in public safety, there are issues that every agency in Texas is also facing,” he said. We had a feeling Dallasites may not be keen about the potential return of speeding cameras, so we took to the Nextdoor app to ask how neighbors might feel if fixed speed- ing cameras become legal. Here are some of the responses we got: “Whatever it takes to calm vehicular traffic.” — Randall W. “You can send me a picture of a ticket and maybe I can send you a picture of a check.” — Carrie F. “Big Brother and their cameras. No fixed speeding cameras, or any other kind either.” — Kathy H. “I would not be a happy camper, it stands for everything un-American.” — Fernando T. DPD wants a return of red-light cameras. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
