Officals Explain Changes to Plans for New Dallas Police Academy

By Devyani Chhetri

Source The Dallas Morning News

A day after Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he was withholding additional state funding for Dallas’ new police academy because the plans had changed, city officials were on damage control at a Wednesday meeting.

Days after The Dallas Morning News reported the city planned to split the academy into two, Dallas leaders announced another change Tuesday night, increasing the facility’s footprint at the University of Texas Dallas from 7 acres to 14. The city is still on the lookout for a much larger 60-acre site to build a training space for new recruits. It is expected to cost another $70 million.

The changes are drastically different from what was originally marketed to voters in 2024 to secure $50 million in bonds at UNTD. Officials said at the time the state-of-the-art academy would train future recruits.

Patrick, who championed the project in the Legislature, said Tuesday he was pulling a $5 million pledge he announced in October because he wasn’t notified in advance about the significant changes in the city’s plan. He is expecting the city to brief legislators on the final details of the plan.

“Without The Dallas Morning News’ recent reporting, I would not have known of the location change for this project or its skyrocketing price,” Patrick said in a statement. “This is a very disappointing turn of events.”

Mayor Eric Johnson, concerned about the hit to the city’s reputation after Patrick’s announcement, began Wednesday’s meeting by asking city officials to lay out clearly why the plans had changed from 2021.

“Sometimes the stuff we do around here is just bigger than us — the individual council and mayor. It’s bigger than us,” Johnson said. “Sometimes the stuff we do around here directly affects the future of the city itself in terms of how it is viewed by our partners, by our residents, by our voters, by the world.”

He said he didn’t want Dallas to be perceived as a city that cannot follow through on its commitments.

"He was selling a new recruit facility"

Jennifer Nicewander, director of the office of bond and construction management, told council members that the city’s latest UNTD plan includes a 70,000-square-foot facility, smaller than the 200,000 footprint proposed in 2021.

Interim Assistant Police Chief Israel Herrera said the UNTD site offers the department the opportunity to modernize training by connecting police officers with criminal justice research conducted by the college faculty. The new recruits would continue training at the current mold-infested facility in the Red Bird area, but they could have training modules at the UNTD campus, Herrera said. Council member Kathy Stewart found it troubling the city couldn’t use UNTD as the primary training space for recruits, especially since the previous leadership, including former Police Chief Eddie García, used a video featuring images of the current training facility to advocate for more bond dollars. “He was selling a new recruit facility,” Stewart said.

For more than two hours, city officials continued giving answers that confused council members.

Herrera said DPD realized the 2021 plan, which called for an emergency driving track and shooting range at a different location, didn’t work anymore. City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said police associations were also concerned the components would not be delivered on the UNTD campus. She did not share what the associations had told her.

Nicewander said none of the literature, whether it be the bond language or previous city documentation, promised the UNTD site was meant for the basic academy. “We promised a police training academy,” Nicewander said. “In everything that I’ve seen, we didn’t necessarily separate those two between in-service and basic.”

On Tuesday, Johnson blamed the university for the change of plans.

UNT Dallas President Warren von Eschenbach, who was also present at Wednesday’s meeting, did not address Johnson’s comments. Instead, he reiterated that the partnership between the city and the university will allow criminal justice department faculty members to provide research and data analysis, advanced leadership training and pathways into degree programs for both sworn law enforcement officers and new recruits.

Council member Paul Ridley point-blank asked why the two facilities had to be separated.

“As we talk about offering regional training, the last thing I want is to have an officer from an outside agency parking lot handing out business cards to our recruits who are trying to go through our training,” Herrera said.

The answer gave Ridley pause. “You’re concerned about people soliciting our recruits during training at the UNT campus,” he asked. “Why can’t they do that at the existing training academy?”

The District 14 council member said Herrera’s reasoning was flimsy and did not justify why the training portions were split. In fact, his takeaway from the entire meeting was the city’s plan so far was “partially baked.”

Lynn McBee, the city’s workforce development czar who has been raising donor funds for the academy with former council member Jennifer Gates, said they had stopped asking for donations until they got clarity on the city’s final plan.

So far, the city has raised at least $70 million from a $50 million bond package approved by voters, state funds and philanthropic dollars. Those were secured as officials were framing the project as being at UNT Dallas, and the state’s $20 million grant depends on the project being there.

Meanwhile, McBee and Gates secured $11.5 million in private donations.

Questions about the second site

Assistant City Manager Dev Rastogi said the UNTD facility will break ground in 2026 and the construction could take another 18 months. In the meantime, the city will assess the best site for the second — and biggest — part of the project.

“I guess I’m trying to figure out what’s the most important thing for us to do right now — is it to train recruits or is it to do the Regional Training Academy?” asked council member Paula Blackmon, who anticipated the costs to skyrocket past $150 million to $200 million.

The regional training academy is expected to serve other police departments in the North Texas region. But Blackmon’s questions concerned the public mandate the city received during the November elections — hiring 900 more cops to the city’s police force.

Blackmon suggested the city “value-engineer” the $80 million for the UNTD site to include both facilities, as it could take the city another five years to get to the second project and may set the city up with an unrealistic goal.

“I think it’s about managing expectations,” Blackmon said.

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