Fort Worth police spent how much investigating photo exhibit in New York? | Opinion
You were told that the Fort Worth Police Department pursued a rigorous criminal investigation into a well-traveled art exhibit accused of trafficking child sexual assault material. A grand jury, unsurprisingly, declined to indict anyone, and the police returned the photos. But it was a small price to pay to ensure no kids were harmed for crown jewel cultural institutions were free from the scourge of child sexual assault material.
What you paid for instead: a vacation to New York City!
According to public records obtained by the Fort Worth Report, taxpayers sponsored five cops visiting four museums in Manhattan for a reported cost of $6,988, all to apparently receive the cultural education they missed when they confiscated Sally Mann’s critically acclaimed photography from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The cops reportedly visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
“The fact-finding mission was planned efficiently to allow investigators the ability to divide and conquer a large footprint of museums and see the artwork on display in real time,” police spokesperson Chelsea Krets said.
Efficiently? If I scooped and sculpted that pile of bull, it would make a fine exhibit in the Modern.
Fort Worth police could have saved their time and your money and watched 2005’s “What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann,” which includes interviews with Mann’s children, by then fully grown, reflecting on their experience with Mann’s artwork. The entire film is streaming free, and for the low, low cost of $6,987, I would have taught them how to open YouTube.
If police wanted a more real-time artifact, they could have simply watched “Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann,” produced in the thick of the original controversy around her photography. The 1994 Oscar-nominated documentary is only 30 minutes long and cites expert testimony to show why critics of Mann’s artwork were either suffering cultural illiteracy or untreated perversions. Blood Ties is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The cops could even use my login, as long as they asked nicely.
They could have listened to the ACLU. Or the National Coalition Against Censorship. Or even their local opinionated newsman. Even if you loathe our paywalls, a Star-Telegram subscription is a steal compared to what the cops spent.
In the absolute grand scheme of the city’s budget, $7,000 isn’t much. But the process is infuriating, a massive abuse of your time, intellect and even your purported safety.
In 2023, the National Center for Missing or Exploited Children said it received more than 100 million files of reported child sexual assault material, a 19% jump from the previous year, through their CyberTipline. That’s a lot of museums! If any of these numbers are even remotely correct, then our criminal legal system should be plenty busy identifying, seizing and prosecuting our society’s most severe and shameful conduct.
Instead, there were five less cops protecting your children, deployed instead to examine photos hanging on a wall in a city 1,500 miles away. This cultural experience was available to each of these officers, in their own backyard, until they confiscated the photos.
Do you know the Modern is free on Fridays? Do they?
As a frequent flier between DFW and my hometown, I am perhaps more equipped than most to note how absurd this budget was.
The furthest distance between any two museums on their tour was less than seven miles. (The Guggenheim and Met are a three-minute walk.) Using the city’s expansive network of subways and buses, those cops could have, without exaggeration, taken a red eye to LaGuardia Airport and, for about $10 in public transit per person, visited all four in one day and still touched down at DFW before midnight.
The $2,070 total per diem for the officers is already insane — get a slice of pizza, my guys — but I’m completely unconvinced they even needed a hotel room, let alone the over $2,500 spent on lodging.
None of what I’m saying is rocket science. Google Maps would have had them covered. It is the result of our police lacking the common sense to pick up the phone from the precinct and ask these museum curators, “Hey, is this art, or a criminal conspiracy?” and seeing what they say after their uncontrollable laughter subsides.
My least jaded rationalization is that these police officers were in desperate search for an arts education. I support this and don’t blame them for going outside the city. After all, the Fort Worth school district just cut $1.2 million from visual and performance arts education, so getting that hands-on experience may be tougher. But if I say we should invest money in the arts, even if it means cuts to other budget items, all of a sudden, I want to “defund the police.”
Perish the thought. I’ll spare no expense to ensure that our future police have the tools they need to do their jobs. Even if that means teaching children what they need to know about the arts — and the Constitution — so we don’t need to send five grownups on a field trip.
This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 5:25 AM with the headline "Fort Worth police spent how much investigating photo exhibit in New York? | Opinion."
