A dispute over who can book prisoners into the Dallas County jail has drawn in police unions from across the county.
Fourteen police organizations sent Sheriff Marian Brown a letter this week raising concerns about how the jail now handles people arrested on Dallas County warrants, CBS News Texas reported Friday.
The signers include the Dallas Police Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, the Texas Municipal Police Association and officer associations in Richardson, Irving, Garland, Mesquite, Carrollton, Grand Prairie and other cities, along with the DART police union.
What changed
Under the practice described by both sides, a local police department must either have its prisoner seen by a magistrate locally on county charges or sign an interlocal agreement that pays the sheriff's office $567 per prisoner housed in the county jail. The Dallas Police Department already has such an agreement, according to CBS News Texas.
The concern centers on arrests made by officers in other cities.
Clint McNear, president of the Texas Fraternal Order of Police, told the station that Brown abruptly ended a decades-old practice by declining to accept people arrested on warrants who had not yet appeared before a magistrate. He and Dallas FOP President Sean Pease said departments have reported prisoners being released as a result.
