Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia is suddenly a wanted man in two of the state’s other large cities, and our City Hall was caught looking. Houston and Austin are both without police chiefs; Houston’s resigned amid a rather alarming department scandal and Austin’s reportedly got fed up that the city couldn’t agree to a contract with the police department and retired after 25 years.
Complicating matters is that T.C. Broadnax has taken the city manager job in the state’s capitol, and, if you’ll recall, Garcia told reporters that he would “go through a wall for that man” once his boss’ messy Dallas exit became public knowledge.
And so it wasn’t totally a surprise that interim City Manager Kim Tolbert sent out a statement on Wednesday night to reporters. Her phrasing, however, warrants a raised eyebrow. Without naming them, she told our neighbors to “turn around and go back home.” (She also misspelled his name as “Gracia” once. Maybe she just had thankfulness on her mind.)
So what’s going on here? The crux of the issue, as the Dallas Morning News reported this morning, is that the Dallas city charter precludes the City Council from signing a contract with the police chief. He is an at-will employee, meaning the city manager could part ways with him at any time just as he could part ways with the city. I got on the phone this morning with sources around City Hall and tried to get a sense of what’s happening behind the scenes. Here’s what I can tell you, although I promised not to name names so folks could speak freely.