Crime prevention or ‘slush fund’? Why Fort Worth’s police tax may be in jeopardy
The future of a more than $80 million Fort Worth Police fund will be on the ballot in July, giving voters a choice between scaling back police spending or locking in the department’s enhanced patrols and special programs for a decade.
At City Hall, officials say a half-cent sales tax (known as the Crime Control and Prevention District) is vital to reducing crime and paying for extra programs the police department couldn’t afford otherwise. But critics argue the money could be better spent boosting community-based initiatives to mentor children and provide stability.
Though voters have supported the tax by wide margins since it was first approved in 1995, enhanced scrutiny of the police — especially following the killing of Atatiana Jefferson in October and the protests over the death of George Floyd — may put the tax in peril. It is on the July 14 ballot. Early voting starts June 29.
“To the extent that the tax is jeopardy, I think there may be a contentious battle ahead,” said John Worrall, a professor of criminology at UT Dallas who specializes in policing and crime control policy. “Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s there was a lot of public support for funding police, but the pendulum has swung in the other direction.”
The fund has steadily grown to more than three times its original size over the last 25 years. According to the state comptroller, the sales tax brought in a little more than $26.6 million in 1997. The city expects it to reach nearly $88 million this year, though the recession is likely to drop sales tax revenue. This revenue is in addition to more than $267 million the police department receives through the city’s general fund.
The sales tax now funds nearly 300 positions, largely in the Fort Worth Police Department, including 97 neighborhood patrol officers, 77 school officers and 50 special response team members. Sixteen are non-police positions, those who work with graffiti abatement and late-night programs.
The largest portion of the special tax is devoted to equipment and vehicles for the police department — more than $32.5 million in 2020. That includes more than $10 million for the upkeep of high mileage vehicles and $3.6 million to cover jail costs. In 2017, more than $3.2 million was set aside to help purchase a police helicopter.
Opposition to sales tax
City Manager David Cooke and Mayor Betsy Price appear confident the tax will pass easily. In 2014, the last time it was up for renewal, nearly 86% of voters agreed to continue the funding.
But an effort is building off weeks of Fort Worth protests to encourage voters to say no to the tax. One group of demonstrators, Black Love, has split from other protesters and is encouraging people to sign a petition to defund the police.
Pamela Young, an organizer with the grassroots coalition United Fort Worth, called the crime district tax a “police slush fund” that no longer serves the public. The organization is joining calls in other major cities to defund the police and sees the upcoming election as a chance to use tax dollars on other programs.
Few things in the crime district budget fulfill the original purpose of the tax, Young argued. Units like SWAT and the Special Response Team, which is similar to SWAT, react to crime, instead of prevent it, she said.
She criticized the $1.7 million spent on the mounted patrol unit as “just for show,” and said money spent on school resource officers, more than $10.1 million in 2020, would be better spent on counselors and mentors. The city splits the cost of school police with school districts inside city limits.
“Our tax dollars should go to things that actually improve public safety and improve our community,” Young said, adding that United Fort Worth wanted to see the city invest more in affordable housing, health care and employment resources.
Young said the public should have more say in how the sales tax is used. From the inception of the crime district in 1995 until 2010, a volunteer board appointed by the City Council created crime district budgets and submitted recommendations to the council for approval. In 2010, the council dissolved the independent board and took control of managing the district.
“It was intended to be governed by community members,” she said.
United Fort Worth has also pushed for the city to develop a community review board for the police department.
Price argued these programs have been vital to keeping crime low in Fort Worth even as the population has increased.
Crime has dropped 63% since the district was enacted 25 years ago, according the police department. Price, in an emailed statement, attributed the drop directly to the sales tax fund, saying it has “played a part in making Fort Worth one of the nation’s safest large cities.”
Worrall, the UT Dallas professor, hesitated to attribute any amount of crime reduction to the sales tax-funded programs.
Most of America’s large cities have seen a reduction in crime over the same period, he said. Many things have contributed to that drop, including enhanced policing, increased employment, and after-school and gang intervention programs.
“There are dozens if not hundreds of studies trying to answer the question of, Do police reduce crime?,” Worrall said.
Little research exists on whether specially funded police programs reduce crime, he said, and he was unaware of anyone studying the effectiveness of crime control prevention districts in Texas.
While many suburbs have citywide crime control districts, including Grapevine, Southlake and Grand Prairie, Fort Worth is by far the largest city in Texas to devote sales tax to the police. Dallas, Austin and Houston devote a full cent to fund transit agencies. San Antonio splits the money across several programs.
“We understand full-well that the root causes of crime lie in the community, and aren’t something the police can fix uniformly,” Worrall said. “I don’t think it’s an entirely one-sided affair. It’s not all on the police to stop crime and it’s not all on the community.”
The sales tax helps the city fund police programs without increasing property tax, Cooke said. Altogether the city spends more than $300 million on policing, which he said would be a priority regardless of the sales tax.
Cooke wouldn’t speculate on what exactly would happen if the tax isn’t renewed. The city has the authority to collect the tax through December and could ask voters to take it up again in November.
Voters are being asked to approve the sales tax for 10 years, instead of the traditional five-year cycle, so the city could better plan for the long term and avoid the cost of holding an election, he said.
Manny Ramirez, president of the police officer’s union, said approving the sales tax doesn’t lock the money in for certain police programs. If residents want to see the money spent differently, they should petition their council members for change during the annual budget cycle, he said.
Ramirez was adamant that the union doesn’t have influence over how the crime sales tax is spent, saying he’d never had a conversation with a council member about it.
The special tax could be a way to fund increased training in areas like use of force and mental health, or it could provide dollars for mental health services for officers, he said.
Voting against the half cent would mean the money isn’t available for anything, he said.
“Without the tax, that’s not $80 million to spend on something else, it’s $80 million that’s gone,” Ramirez said. “I think it can be as flexible as we want it to be.”
Community-based programs
A small amount, 6% or about $5 million, of the crime control district’s funding goes to “Partners with a Shared Mission.” That includes after school programs, the One Safe Place center and Comin’ Up, the gang intervention program. The city also spends just under $1 million for the Code Blue program, which operates like a community watch, through the the special tax.
That’s not enough money to support community programs, said Dante Williams, president of Community Frontline of Fort Worth. The east Fort Worth-based nonprofit works on a number community issues, including police relations, employment and mentoring.
Williams said even if voters approve the tax, the City Council should commit to shifting the dollars to community organizations that work with children, particularly those who may be at risk. Youth sports programs, mentorship initiatives, food banks and job centers can reduce crime without increasing policing, he said.
“There are a lot of different ways we can think outside the box if we’re truly trying to prevent crime and not just fund the police,” he said. “Giving the police more funds isn’t helping the problem, so at some point we have to look at defunding the police.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 1:49 PM.
