8 September 11 - 17, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents want him here. It’s upsetting to me because I feel their pain, and I can’t do anything.” After working their entire lives, Martin Sr. and his wife were planning on slowing down soon and gearing up for eventual re- tirement. But those dreams are slashed. Now the family’s only focus is on paying their lawyer and continuing to defend their home. Right now, there is no backup plan, and they’ll wait until a constable comes to forcibly evict them, which could happen any day. “When we first got our lawyer, we fig- ured, ‘Oh, a few months, we’ll be all right,” said Cristo. “But we’re just waiting for that. It’s like a noose around our necks. We’re just waiting. Just waiting for it to be over.” More than anything, Cristo and his fam- ily worry that even if they get their house back, what’s to stop this from happening again, or what’s to stop it from happening to another person? “The only reason why I would go to the police and why I try to reach out to new peo- ple is that I don’t want this to happen to any- one else,” he said. “Especially if my brother is doing this, and I don’t want him to do it again to anyone else.” ▼ CITY HALL STAYING POWER DALLAS HERO WANTS CITY LEADERS TO KNOW: THEY’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE. BY EMMA RUBY I f the Dallas City Council walked away from their Sept. 3 meeting hearing one thing, Damien LeVeck hopes it is that some Dallas residents want their cops to be paid more. In fact, they demand it. A top-five-in-the- region salary for officers fresh out of train- ing is one of several requirements listed in Proposition U, the ordinance LeVeck’s orga- nization, Dallas HERO, helped usher into the rule books last fall. Voters passed the mandate during the process of amending the city’s governing document, which takes place every 10 years. Dallas HERO brands itself as a “bipartisan and citizen-led” watchdog group dedicated to holding city hall accountable. The organiza- tion became a key player on Marilla Street ahead of the 2024 November election, when it ran a well-funded, well-organized campaign of support for three city charter amendments — all opposed by a coalition of less-organized city hall insiders and bigwigs. On election day, two of the amendments passed: the aforemen- tioned U and Proposition S, which opens the city up to litigation if the city fails to comply with local or state ordinances. For many groups formed around an elec- tion-season message, the hubbub likely would have ended with the election. But as LeVeck and an entourage of more than a dozen supporters took to the microphone during Wednesday’s meeting’s public speaker portion, the opposite was made clear, if it hadn’t been obvious already. In a world of short attention spans and political fatigue, Dallas HERO is a thing that has stuck in Dallas politics. “Putting the charter amendment on the ballot was a referendum on public safety,” LeVeck told the Observer on Wednesday. “Now, what Dallas HERO is doing is taking the position of holding the city accountable. Mak- ing sure that they implement [Proposition U] and hire more police, raise their pay, et cetera.” Police Problems Prop. U calls for more funding for the police department, including a sizable chunk of new revenue. It mandates that at least 4,000 offi- cers be sworn into the department and re- quires that officers’ starting salaries be among the top-five highest in the region. The ordinance is no small thing, especially as Dal- las city leaders are staring down the barrel of a budget that is larger than ever but still seems to squeeze city services to the limit: eliminating libraries, community pools and entire programs are all on the table. “There are no sacred cows,” said City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert when de- scribing the tightening up Marilla Street has to do in the upcoming fiscal year — other than the police and fire departments, that is. As Prop. U demands. In the last five years, starting salaries for Dallas police officers have increased by nearly 50%. Tolbert has proposed bumping up start- ing police pay to $81,232, a 7.7% raise from the starting salary currently advertised by the de- partment. The proposed 2025-26 budget also allocates more money to the police and fire de- partments than in previous years. But for Prop. U’s most ardent supporters, that isn’t enough. One of Wednesday’s speakers, Diane Benjamin, ran for city council in May on a public safety platform. She accused the council of “gaslighting” residents by sug- gesting that the proposed starting salary is more significant than it is. “We are not fooled,” Benjamin said. “You can try to spin this, but in the end, there are only two choices. Either you comply with Prop. U, or you betray the people who passed it.” Dallas HERO provided the Observer with a list of 11 municipalities in Dallas’ surround- ing counties that they believe give officers who have completed their training a salary higher than the $81,232 proposed in Dallas’ budget. According to Prop. U, DPD needs to be in the top five. The Observer was able to in- dependently verify the starting salaries for all 11 cities, and the numbers all come in higher than what is recommended in Dallas’ budget, suggesting that the $81k, while an increase from this fiscal year, still isn’t in compliance. The city isn’t basing that $81,232 on the salary other cities offer to recruits either — at least six of the 11 towns on Dallas HERO’s list offer recruits a larger check. However, the city claims that the budget complies with the mandate. The budget states that the starting salary was decided on through a “comparison of salaries and bene- fits across the five-county region in align- ment with the charter amendment.” When the numbers used in that comparison were gathered, though, could complicate things. Seven of the 11 departments on Dallas HERO’s list show when their last pay raise was adopted. Of those, five have increased their pay within the last nine months. Grand Prairie PD and Frisco PD, the two highest- paid departments, adopted the salaries in July and April of this year, respectively. So Dallas may have run a salary compari- son that complies with Prop U., but if that search was done in the earlier part of this year, it won’t include the most up-to-date sal- ary information for comparison. The propo- sition doesn’t state how, when, or how often the city needs to conduct this analysis. And even as Tolbert has stated her commitment to beefing up Dallas’ police force, especially the pension program, we speculate there is still a fair bit of hesitancy when it comes to fully bending to the Prop. U mandate. Former Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia was outspokenly against the ordinance, and some council members speculated that it was the Dallas HERO drama that played a role in his decision to leave Dallas. Within weeks of Election Day, crediting agency Moody’s downgraded Dallas’ rating, noting that “the negative outlook reflects the ex- pected credit impact of Proposition U.” Technicalities of Prop. U aside, LeVeck isn’t exactly a welcome messenger around the horseshoe. On his personal social media accounts, he has a propensity for calling out council members using derogatory, Trump-esque nicknames. Even before LeVeck took over Dallas HERO, critics narrowed their eyes at the organization’s extreme messaging and GOP associations. LeVeck was named executive director of the organization earlier this year. Before him, it was Pete Marocco, the two-time Trump administration staffer who was pushed out of the State Department after dismantling USAID this spring, at the helm. Conservative megadonor Monty Bennett has admitted to providing the group with fi- nancial support. However, the extent of that support — or anyone’s support, for that mat- ter — is tricky to nail down because the group is not legally required to disclose its donors. You may not agree with LeVeck’s brash, no-punches-pulled calls for change, but some within city hall have admitted that the passage of Prop. U undoubtedly showed that something in his message resonated with Dallasites. Violent crime across the city continues to fall, but response times for issues like prop- erty crimes remain problematic. The city can’t figure out what to do about nighttime enforcement for nuisances like noise com- plaints; they aren’t totally a police issue, and aren’t totally a code compliance issue. Either way, if you have a toddler who can’t sleep because the neighbors next door hired a midnight DJ, and no one shows up to shut the shindig down, the police are an easy scapegoat. “[Proposition U] passed even with in- tense media coverage and a million-dollar campaign against it,” said Council member Cara Mendelsohn back in February, when the council began discussing what to do about the 900 additional officers that Prop. U demands to be added to the police force. “The people still said we want more police officers. The results should be a wake-up call to all of us.” Dallas HERO didn’t lose steam after the November election, and they haven’t gone away since the city council elections in May, although some candidates the group backed failed in their bids. The new goalpost, bring- ing Dallas into compliance with Prop. U, could keep the organization’s message going as long as Dallas allows it to stretch on. And if the city doesn’t comply, litigation is “on the table” because Dallas HERO ensured it would be, through Proposition S. According to LeVeck’s calculations (which the Observer verified), Dallas needs to add an additional $5,100 to the proposed officer salaries for the upcoming fiscal year to comply with Prop. U. Where is that money supposed to come from? For the first time, the city’s annual budget is expected to exceed $5 billion. LeVeck says: Find the money. “We’re spending more money than ever, and we aren’t prioritizing public safety. Whenever it comes to the budget conversa- tions about hiring more cops and raising their pay, the issue is always, ‘Oh, well, we don’t have the money for it,’” LeVeck said. “We would like to see Dallas Police number one [on the salary chart]. The biggest police de- partment should be number one.” Brian Maschino Dallas HERO didn’t lose steam after the November election. If Dallas doesn’t comply with Prop. U, the controversial group is ready to keep going. Unfair Park from p6 >> p10
