Cedar Hill Police Department passes profiling standard in annual report

by Steve Snyder of Cedar Hill TODAY

Cedar Hill Police Chief Steve Rhodes gave the Cedar Hill City Council an overview of 2008 police activity at its March 24 meeting.

Lt. Pam Brown said the city had reduced its response time to major crime calls by 15 seconds from 2007 to 2008, down to 5 minutes, 30 seconds. Non-emergency response times went up by about the same percentage, from 12 minutes to 12:41.

Other major changes in 2008 include hiring Rodney Thompson as a second assistant chief and establishing permanent crime and patrol beats for officers. Thompson gave the city an overview of this program.

Thompson said the city has been divided into five beats as part of the program, and the department had developed a profile for each one, all to improve communications with residents.

“We see a direct correlation between increased communication and (the success of) this program,” he said. “We've been able to increase our resources for problem-solving (and) our officers have embraced this philosophy.”

Lt. Steve Lafferty then provided an overview of criminal investigations

The department had 72,505 total cases, up about 11 percent from the 65,496 from 2007. Officers made 2,176 arrests, up from 1,965 in 2007.

In traffic matters, the city had 5,855 red-light camera violations in 2008, down significantly from the 8,338 in 2007. At the same time, though, FM 1382 saw a 19 percent increase in accidents. In 2008, though, Uptown Village opened on 1382, while new businesses were added just off that road on Uptown Boulevard.

The police department's 2008 award winners include Officer of the Year Adrian Saldana, Supervisor of the Year Norman Hammel, Rookie of the Year Ann McSwain and Civilian of the Year MaLinda Nicholson.

Chief Rhodes then presented the department's annual racial profiling analysis, as required by law. The review found the department fully in compliance with state law on working to avoid racial profiling.

Cedar Hill population is 51 percent white, 33.5 percent black and 12 percent Hispanic. Traffic stops were 36 percent white, 53 percent black and 9 percent Hispanic, while, among drivers who were stopped, 2.5 percent of whites, 4 percent of Hispanics and 5 percent of blacks were searched. Of stopped drivers, nearly half were not from Cedar Hill.

The report notes that an aggregate review of the department can determine little about individual officers' decisions on individual traffic stops. The survey also does not include data on the age of stopped drivers, and age is a significant determinant in crime rates.

Eric Fritsch of the University of North Texas, who has been a city consultant on the analysis for the last five years, said the report also does not point out that often, the officer of record does not know the race of the person he or she stops before making the stop. Fritsch said that the average of cities for which he consults is that the race is unknown before the stop about 80 percent of the time.

“At nighttime I can accept that premise; in daytime, I can't,” Councilman Cliff Shaw said.

Fritsch noted that some traffic stops, such as speeding as determined by a radar gun, are initiated from several hundred yards away.

In response to a question from Mayor Rob Franke, Fritsch said municipal police departments are the only law enforcement entities in the state required to do racial profiling reports. However, he said State Sen. Royce West has a bill in the Texas Legislature that would require all police departments in the state, such as sheriff's departments, constables and such to do similar reports.

The council then officially accepted both reports.