City bond meetings have been widely criticized as chaotic and mismanaged. The most controversial proposition of the bond vote, Proposition F, suggests using $50 million in public city funds to construct the new police training compound on University of North Texas at Dallas campus. Amidst rising social unrest, human rights advocates are concerned that a ‘Cop City’ in Dallas could bring on a new age of political repression through over-policing.
Plans for ‘Cop Cities,’ or multi-facility police training compounds, have started popping up across the United States in the last year. As public contention over Atlanta’s Cop City drew attention in 2023, with the project approved for construction by the City of Atlanta despite a 124 – 4 tally against the initiative, 13 states currently have similar facilities under construction.
First reported simply as a police academy, Dallas’ Cop City is currently being planned for construction on UNT’s Dallas campus in 2025 with a target completion date of 2027. The lease on UNTD grounds would cost the city $1 per year under a 40-year contract.
The training compound would span 5 acres along I-35 and I-20 with an additional 20 acres secured for a simulated urban environment at an adjacent location.
The budget is estimated at $140 million, an already outdated figure as that cost is based on 2017 projections from an outside party. As the state has pledged $20 million, the Community Foundation of Texas has donated $10 million. Aside from this, private donors will be providing over $60 million in funding.
Proposition F, part of the roll out of budget proposals on the May 4 ballot following bond talks, determines the approval of the $90 million public safety budget. This includes the commitment of $50 million to the construction of the police training compound. The facility is expected to provide Dallas Police Department and potentially other police forces additional instruction focused on day-to-day policing, as well as ‘simulated scenarios.’
“Very slowly, they started releasing information. Everything else, we had to research. […] Never once at these meetings did a public safety official speak, [that allotment] was only a line item in discussion,” community activist Nora Soto says. Additionally, the City Council walked back on delaying the vote to November to hold the bond election in May. “Not only to rush, they saved a lot of money too. There would be more polling locations for the November election, so they’d have to hire more municipal workers.”
Soto is co-founder of the now disbanded organizing collective Our City Our Future (OCOF), which focused on divesting money from policing and investing city funds into their communities. She attended bond talks over the previous months, primarily to follow the development of the police training compound.
“During the 2020 uprisings, there was a sense that we were making progress with the protests and putting pressure on city governments. Unfortunately, the city and state governments over-corrected. It went so far in the other direction, like with HB 1900 […] So, any allies that we had within the city government, there was no way they were going to work with us anymore if they would be under threat of losing state funding.”
Following the passage of House Bill 1900, municipalities are penalized by the State of Texas if cuts are made to the local police budget. As this development caused the dissolution of OCOF, community activists now work to ensure budgets do not increase while policing stays on track to further dominate city budgets across Texas. Prop F has already done just that as other potential measures were discarded in favor of construction of the training facility.
Other community activist leaders, like John Fullinwider of Mothers Against Police Brutality, are similarly concerned about the project and rising police budgets. “If you have a hammer, anything out there is going to look like a nail,” Fullinwider says.
“It’s funny, the SWAT team is seen as ubiquitous in policing today, but it wasn’t always. It was part of the escalation in the War on Drugs. I remember there were specific grants during the Reagan Administration for helicopters and [other] gear. If you’re trained to do it, you’re gonna do it. If you’re given a certain type of gear and a mandate to use it, that’ll change how you’re policing.”
In 2020, protests in the wake of the police killings of Black civilians such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor put law enforcement under greater public scrutiny, especially in Dallas.
“It was obvious in 2020 that Dallas police were way overly-aggressive with protesters. A lot of police forces were sued after the fact. Dallas was the only police force enjoined to stop all of their so-called crowd control methods after a ruling from a federal judge.” Fullinwider refers to the temporary federal ruling against the Dallas Police Department in response to a lawsuit from protesters, including Vincent Doyle, whose left eye was blinded by an officer’s laser sight.
“You have [Brandon Saenz], who was hit with a projectile and lost his eye, lost some of his teeth. And then you have the chronic brutalizer Roger Rudloff, who doesn’t really care who’s filming him,” Fullinwider says. “Building one of these urban villages for [officers and cadets] to commando around in – I know that’s not a good idea.”
As a university and public law school with focused educational programs in public safety and criminal justice, police presence on UNT Dallas campus has already been largely normalized for students and faculty. However, many hold reservations about the project.
Mathematics student Jennifer expressed deep concern regarding the potential of increased police presence on campus.
“I don’t like it and the idea of spending more money on the police. It is not good, in my opinion. Many people in my life feel negatively about the police. I feel negatively about the police. My mom feels negatively about the police. If this was being built where I live I’d be even more uncomfortable.”
Kev, a religious studies graduate who now serves as a member of Baptist Student Ministries, expressed that while he’s not against the police having training grounds, he feels dissatisfaction with the lack of support for the university’s own facilities. Ongoing projects include construction of a STEM Lab and a new student housing building.
“I think we should be putting money into education. Like the actual university. Several buildings are being constructed and their progress is dependent on grants entirely. […] When more money is going towards things like [the police], it shows you where the city’s priorities are.”
UNT Dallas campus currently only provides housing for up to 120 students with 300-400 students actively seeking lodging options. Additionally, more than one in ten students would directly benefit from additional STEM facilities.
Melissa, a visitor seeing a friend on campus, says she wouldn’t accept a police compound being built on her school’s grounds. “I go to UT Arlington. Yeah, a police training facility doesn’t sound good and I wouldn’t like that. I don’t think it’s ethical to be having [police] training in a space that should be about education,” she says. “I’m a business major and ethics is such a big part of our curriculum. The lack of ethics with this is crazy.”
While conducting interviews with students on campus regarding the compound, a faculty member (who refused to provide a name) escorted press off UNTD grounds despite self-identifying. University President Bob Mong attributed this to ‘cautiousness’ on campus regarding visitors and extended an apology.
However, despite renderings outlining a police training campus adjoined by separate buildings with different facilities, Mong believes referring to it as a compound is ‘pejorative.’
“It’s a pejorative phrase, like ‘Cop City’ is pejorative. It’s not [going to be] several buildings right now. It’s a big building, but it’s just one building.”
Mong states that training at the facility will mainly emphasize conflict de-escalation and mental health awareness. Though Mong only refers to the ‘first phase’ of the development and says he’s unaware of what specific type of training will take place on the 20 acres of property adjacent to the 5 acres on UNTD campus.
“The city gave us the land for a dollar. They gave us 264 acres of land when Ron Kirk was mayor. I’d say that’s a pretty good deal. The city owns land east of us, we own the land south of the railway […] the idea would be to swap that land,” Mong says. “The designs aren’t even done. [Whatever is in the plan] is aspirational. It wouldn’t be on our campus. […] What we’re focused on is simulated situations.”
Over the last decade, billions of dollars have been put towards policing in Dallas. And despite 2022-2023 seeing an increased budget totaling $611.9 million, crime rates stagnated, increasing overall by two-thirds-of-a-percent as murders variably saw a spike comparable to Dallas’ worse years. President Mong says that lack of improvement is ‘arguable’ and that the need for new facilities justifies the budget, which is equal to the allotments for libraries, housing, and homelessness combined. “I think there’s a lot of positive trends going on with a data-driven approach[…] It’s a complicated issue.” Mong says.
Variably, Councilmember Tennell Atkins, who has taken a special role in promoting the project planned within District 8, could not be reached for comment.
The passage of Proposition F would further invest city funding in law enforcement, staying on trend with the 2017 bond program’s significant increase to the public safety budget and 2023-2024’s police budget increase to almost $662 million.
The training facility would not only provide training for DPD officers, but would be recruiting public safety majors from UNT Dallas. The compound would also potentially provide training for other police forces in the DFW metroplex, gaining more funds through contracts between Dallas/UNT Dallas and other city governments.
Vote on Proposition F on May 4 (or during early voting on April 22-30) to determine whether public funds will contribute to the training compound in District 8 of Dallas. To speak out against the construction of the compound, sign the petition by local coalition Stop Cop City Dallas.