DyNell Lane had been seeking answers for months when he stepped up to a podium in February to address a group of civilian police watchdogs.
“I really just want to know the status of what’s going on,” the disabled veteran told Dallas’ Community Police Oversight Board, made up of 15 residents appointed by the City Council.
Nine months ago, Lane filed a complaint over an incident in which four police officers laughed after he urinated on himself when he wasn’t allowed to use the restroom at a Deep Ellum pizza joint. The incident was caught on body camera video and the case went viral after the oversight office shared the footage at one of its monthly meetings.
He’s still waiting for the Dallas Police Department to address the officers’ behavior.
The city’s handling of Lane’s case has led to questions from the oversight board, activists and experts about Dallas’ commitment to independent police oversight, according to an investigation by The Dallas Morning News. At issue is how the city’s oversight office — and the civilian board that guides it — lost its authority to investigate complaints when its only investigator was shifted out of his role and lost its control over what grievances could be reviewed when the power was diminished by city officials, multiple board members told The News.
The oversight office, which has four full-time employees, works with the civilian board to review residents’ complaints against police. The office was created in 2019 and is overseen by City Manager T.C. Broadnax, who declined to answer questions about the Lane case.
The News interviewed 10 board members, as well as city leaders, activists and national civilian police oversight experts, who identified multiple obstacles impeding oversight:
- Gaps in communication between the city, the office, the board and police. Board members said their work is hindered because they are left in the dark about staffing changes, but the city manager said it’s not the board’s job to be informed about hiring or personnel changes.
- Lack of transparency about ongoing investigations. Many board members said they are not getting regular updates about the status of investigations.
- Staff turnover over the past 12 to 18 months. Dallas’ first police monitor and oversight investigator left their positions in the months after Lane’s case was brought to light. The city manager would not spell out why.
- Lack of urgency from city officials to find a new permanent police monitor. Dallas’ first director of the oversight office left her role in September, but officials didn’t list a job posting to replace her for four months.
- The interim police monitor does not have a background in criminal justice, which board members say hampers oversight’s ability to conduct thorough investigations and reviews of complaints.
- Board members said their questions and concerns are dismissed by city and police officials. Board members at times don’t receive follow-up materials, such as video and other information to help understand complaints.
- The office’s budget is $784,565, less than one-sixth the budget of Austin, which has fewer police officers, and well below that of many large cities with oversight.
To the oversight board and former office staffers, the circumstances of Lane’s case represented the pinnacle of their role as police watchdogs. Dallas police first declined to investigate it, but after the oversight office shed light, the department opened a probe into Lane’s complaint in August.
Soon after, according to several board members, Dallas’ inaugural police monitor and an investigator left under uncertain circumstances, the search for replacements was muddied by unexplained delays and oversight officials felt paralyzed and confused about how to fulfill their mission after sudden limitations to their power.
Dallas police Chief Eddie García told The News he understands the frustration with the Lane case, but said he wouldn’t characterize the time it has taken as a delay. He pointed to the “procedural part of any administrative investigation” and officers’ civil service rights, adding that he knows of cases that took “much longer than a year” before he got to Dallas in 2021.
He said the Lane case shows the oversight process worked — after the board decried the department’s handling of Lane’s complaint, DPD opened a review.
“I have always advocated for the director to come to me if there were disagreements in a case,” he said. “As I’ve said many times, we may not agree all the time, but oftentimes we do. And oftentimes we do miss something, and we do need to take another look at it.”
In a memo in January, the chief told the board the investigation was on hold “due to circumstances beyond my control,” adding police would “promptly continue” processes once one of the officers who was involved was back from family medical leave. That officer has returned, but the case is open until discipline, if any, is issued, according to police officials.
The chief told The News the attention the case has received won’t affect his response or the process.
“We want to do the right thing when no one’s looking,” García said. “The last thing that we want to do is violate a process and then later on be found that we did something wrong with regards to discipline — if any was imposed.”
Lane told The News he’s frustrated by his inability to get closure and said he doesn’t believe police are taking his complaint seriously. He said he had a difficult time leaving his home after the case went viral.
“I think about it every day,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Nah, I don’t want nobody to recognize me.’ The shame I feel, there’s no need for me to go. … It makes you not want to call for help, can’t call — because I don’t want to get frustrated, I don’t want to spaz out in public.”
Lane said this isn’t about settling a case with the city of Dallas. He wants to make sure what happened to him never happens to anyone else with a disability. He is calling for the officers to be fired.
Lane has not filed a lawsuit against police or the city, but the completion of the investigation would not prevent him from doing so in the future.
It isn’t enough, he said, to leave his case with a police department he no longer trusts.
“I want the Dallas oversight board to have their shot at it,” Lane said. “I want the resources that are already available, that are already a part of this, to do their job.”
Dallas’ first police monitor
Dallas’ Office of Community Police Oversight and the civilian oversight board are separate entities that work together. An internal document shows plans for seven positions in the office, but not all of them have been budgeted or filled. The current employees are the interim monitor, a mediator, an intake specialist and a community outreach manager, according to city officials.
The office serves as a liaison between police and the board and investigates civilian complaints as directed by the board. The office typically receives dozens of complaints every month, but only a sampling is brought to the board for a full review and vote on whether to launch an independent investigation, according to data presented at the monthly meetings.
The board, made up of volunteers, reviews critical incidents and civilian complaints about police, outlines policy recommendations and calls for independent investigations when it disagrees with the police department’s handling of a grievance. Their findings are routinely forwarded to the police chief as a recommendation. It’s up to the chief to act on the recommendation.
Dallas has long had a civilian board that reviews complaints about police, but it was previously called the Citizens Police Review Board and its primary role was to request that police reinvestigate civilian complaints if it disagreed with the department’s initial investigation.
In 2017, a coalition of social justice and activist groups began to work on recommendations to restructure the board. That work took on a renewed sense of urgency and began to gain political support after the 2018 murder of Botham Jean by former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger.
Jean, a Black 26-year-old accountant and St. Lucia native, was eating ice cream on his couch when Guyger, a white off-duty officer still in uniform, entered his apartment that was a floor above hers. Guyger testified that she mistook Jean’s apartment for hers, thought he was an intruder and fatally shot him. She is serving a 10-year sentence for murder.
As outrage and protests grew over the murder, the city held a series of town halls that often laid bare political and racial tensions between Dallas residents. In April 2019, the City Council voted unanimously for the revamped Community Police Oversight Board.
The overhaul created a position: police monitor, who would review DPD internal investigations and report the findings to board members.
Under an ordinance that laid out the new rules, the monitor would lead a new Office of Community Police Oversight, which was placed under Broadnax.
Broadnax recently announced he’s resigning as the city’s top administrative official. He spoke with The News in January about the state of Dallas police oversight.
“I don’t think our thoughts or opinion, or at least mine, is any different than when we created the office and changed it from a review board to oversight,’’ the city manager said.
He said he supported the shift to an oversight board, adding it’s about “awareness and engagement” with the community so residents have a central place to turn outside of the police department if something doesn’t seem right or police aren’t living up to expectations.
According to the ordinance that created the office, the monitor “shall be a person professionally competent by experience and training to manage” the office, and would have a staff of assistants.
After a national search, Broadnax appointed Tonya McClary to the post in early 2020.
Board members were pleased by the selection, highlighting McClary’s background as a pastor and criminal defense attorney who headed a similar oversight office in New Orleans.
“She was great and had so many great qualifications — we were moving forward,” said oversight board vice-chair Jose Rivas, who was appointed by council member Adam Bazaldua.
Progress over time
In her three years as police monitor, McClary introduced many firsts to Dallas police oversight.
She was the first civilian to gain access to DPD internal affairs records.
She helped craft DPD’s video-release policy, which mandates the department release footage of critical police incidents within 72 hours unless the chief decides to withhold it.
She led an effort to document experiences by protesters during the 2020 civil unrest in downtown Dallas after George Floyd’s murder.
Her certifications allowed her to be present at the scene of shootings involving officers. She organized community meetings and invited the public to air concerns to oversight members.
Even with the strides she made, McClary was vocal about the obstacles she faced.
She said Dallas police often left her out of the loop on the status of investigations, including a probe in 2021 into Sgt. Roger Rudloff, who shot a protester at close range with pepper balls during the George Floyd protests. Rudloff, who has retired, was cleared of wrongdoing.
McClary has said she had to fight to get police data to analyze misdemeanor arrests in Dallas.
She also managed a smaller budget than her previous office in New Orleans. Dallas carved out $784,565 for the oversight office in fiscal year 2023-24. New Orleans — which has a police department about a third of the size of Dallas’ — has an oversight budget of about $1.2 million.
Dallas’ oversight budget also is smaller than other large cities. Austin, with about half as many officers as Dallas, has an oversight budget of about $4.9 million. The police oversight budget in San Diego, which has about 1,100 fewer officers, is $2.2 million.
The most recurring concern McClary and board members echoed in monthly meetings revolved around officers’ unwillingness to cooperate. Dallas police officers have been advised by association leaders not to respond to oversight’s requests, and the ordinance governing the office does not grant subpoena power.
It states the board “may request statements from city employees or police officers through the office,” which would be provided to the office in a non-public setting. An officer cannot be disciplined for refusing to appear voluntarily before the board, according to the ordinance.
In September 2023, McClary left the role. She said in her time as police monitor, only one officer ever gave a statement during an oversight investigation.
Former Dallas Police Association president Mike Mata, who retired in January, was vocal in the past about how no officers would testify or accept oversight decisions until the board went through “at least 16 hours” of use-of-force training.
Sr. Cpl. Jaime Castro, the association’s new president, said DPA doesn’t encourage members to ignore oversight — they “notify members of their rights,” which he said is part of their due process.
He said DPA feels as if oversight has tried to go from overseeing internal affairs proceedings to becoming a disciplinary entity, adding “that’s never going to happen” and the association wouldn’t support changes to the ordinance.
“The DPA will continue to represent and vigorously defend the rights of our members,” Castro said. “We sat with the board when this was first created and both parties agreed to the procedures and the policies that were going to be implemented.”
In an email to The News on Thursday, McClary said she continues to cheer for the board and is hopeful the next police monitor will build on the foundation she and her staff laid.
“I continue to say that what happens with oversight in Dallas has ripple effects in the civilian oversight world nationally and globally,” McClary said.
Chief García told The News there’s “no question” there needs to be police oversight, but he said board members need to put in more effort to get officer buy-in — a sentiment some board members argue shouldn’t be necessary.
“Some people believe that we’re out to get cops,” said board member Brandon Friedman, who was appointed by council member Paul Ridley. “But we’re not. This board is one of the most thoughtful collections of people … who try their very hardest to be fair and equitable when it comes to conflict between residents and the police department.”
Before she abruptly resigned, McClary was in the process of reviewing DPD’s use-of-force and protest policies. She was also working with the police academy to line up a series of trainings for the board and office staff, according to internal documents.
“There was often some strife either between her and the city, her and the board, but it was all professional and I don’t think she was doing a bad job,” Friedman said.
“She was doing a perfectly fine job and then she was gone and no one told us why.”
A case sparks international outrage
At the start of the oversight board’s August meeting, a soft-spoken veteran made his way to the dais at the center of City Hall’s chambers.
There, DyNell Lane told his story publicly for the first time.
In the overnight hours of June 10, he said, two off-duty Dallas officers working security at Serious Pizza refused to review his medical documents so he could use the bathroom. Lane told the board he was wounded while deployed in Afghanistan and Kuwait as an army sergeant.
He called 911 for help, but soiled himself and left before two on-duty officers arrived.
Body-camera footage, shared by the oversight office at the meeting, shows all four officers burst into laughter while recounting how someone “pissed themself.”
The footage sparked an onslaught of outrage from oversight board members and the public.
Many states — including Texas — have a restroom access law known as “Ally’s Law,” which says people lawfully in an establishment should be allowed access to a restroom if they provide evidence they have a medical condition that requires immediate access to a toilet facility.
At the board’s meeting in September, McClary said the oversight office had been inundated with angry calls about the city’s lack of attention toward Lane’s complaint.
“People are cursing us out,” she said, noting the international headlines. She told the board that oversight’s investigation into Lane’s case was halted until DPD completes theirs, but would resume afterward if Lane was unsatisfied. Irene Alanis, the police major over internal affairs, told the board she expected the DPD investigation would be resolved in “less than a month.”
Two days later, Broadnax alerted the board that McClary was leaving. She was placed in the city’s HR department.
The city manager appointed Elaine Chandler, who helped manage the city’s HR department, as her interim replacement.
In his interview with The News, Broadnax declined to explain why McClary left, saying he would not discuss personnel issues and transitions are the nature of city government.
“It’s probably not a board discussion and one that I’m not going to entertain,” he said. “So I appreciate the question, but again that’s probably not appropriate conversations for board members to be having nor am I going to discuss that with anyone — specifically the media.”
Emails obtained by The News through a public records request show city officials had been discussing McClary’s departure since at least July.
On July 11, Broadnax wrote to McClary that he accepted her letter of resignation. It’s not clear in the emails what prompted the resignation.
Nine days later, the city manager’s chief of staff, Genesis Gavino, asked McClary for a summary of a meeting and wrote: “I know the announcement is delayed but I think there are still action items I can get started on to ensure a smooth transition for the future person.”
On July 25, McClary sent documents to Broadnax and his chief of staff and wrote: “I know you and the interim director will have questions. I am here for you and that person. I will work with TC around my last day in the physical office.”
On Aug. 30, McClary wrote to Gavino that she “would like to help with the hiring” of an oversight office executive assistant.
Gavino replied: “We will leave this to the Interim Director to lead.”
The search process for McClary’s replacement did not start until January, when the city officially posted a job listing online. Broadnax said he wasn’t “in a rush to fill that position,” noting Chandler was capable and competent.
Chandler had been the employee relations manager in the city’s HR department since 2019 and city officials did not note any criminal justice or policing-related roles in her background. As part of her shift to the police monitor position, she received a $35,000 pay boost for a total of $140,000, according to the emails obtained by The News.
In her statement to The News, McClary did not elaborate on her departure, but said she’s saddened by “what appears to be backward movement in the historic work of the office and the board.”
Despite the “many obstacles, roadblocks and challenges” she faced as monitor, she said, she was excited to end her tenure “bringing to light the DyNell Lane case.” She noted that even her youngest sister, who lives in Tanzania, heard about the case.
“The Lane case truly showed the power, authority, and breadth of what civilian oversight can do,” she said. “I also applaud Mr. Lane for the courage to speak his truth.”
Beginning to unravel transparency concerns
Board members said they weren’t told the reasons for McClary’s departure.
Changa Higgins, recently appointed by council member Zarin Gracey, said McClary told him she’d been laid off. He said the city doesn’t want “any bad PR about the police department.”
“At this point, this feels intentional,” said Higgins, who was part of the coalition that brought recommendations for the oversight board overhaul in 2019. “This board has been weakened, silenced, and then almost kind of like alienated.”
McClary’s departure triggered a wave of changes. Members said they’ve been blindsided to learn at their monthly meetings when new people were hired to the oversight office. They lambasted the lack of transparency, saying even an email with updates would help.
“We all would’ve been better off if we were told what was happening,” said David Kitner, appointed to the board by council member Gay Donnell Willis. “We’re at best at a standstill.”
Rivas said he was once shocked to find out the only attendee in the audience was the office’s new data support officer. Months later, in January, board members learned oversight’s only investigator, Kevin Williams, had been moved to a community engagement position.
They publicly questioned, without an investigator, how they’d be able to launch independent investigations. They wondered what they’d tell civilians who wanted to complain about officers.
“It’s hard to defend and say this isn’t a b.s. board,” board member Jonathan Maples, who represents Jesse Moreno’s district, said at the January meeting.
Broadnax told The News the city hired an outside firm to help investigate residents’ complaints. He said multiple positions came open even while McClary served as monitor, and the city is looking to fill some of the slots. City spokespersons did not provide comment after The News sent multiple emails with follow-up questions about the investigative firm, including which firm is working with Dallas, if it has already been hired and the cost of the partnership.
Chandler echoed Broadnax’s sentiment, noting she’s proud of the accomplishments the office has made in putting resources in.
“With change in leadership, there’s always going to be some differences,” she told The News in January. “But I think that that’s mostly what the board is feeling. It’s just some of the changes.”
Some board members said oversight’s day-to-day work with the community has suffered as a result of those changes. Friedman said board members have “generally stopped” doing outreach events with the public, which the oversight office “has always been responsible for supporting.” He said it didn’t seem like it was “really being treated as the priority it once was.”
Chandler did not respond to an email and multiple phone calls seeking comment.
Many members have experienced technical difficulties that have barred them from accessing video or complaint information key to making decisions. They noted that Chandler’s background is in HR, not criminal justice, and said she hasn’t brought them concerns about DPD’s decisions. McClary frequently voiced worries at board meetings about the outcome of DPD investigations.
Board member Loren Gilbert-Smith, appointed by council member Carolyn King Arnold, told The News that oversight has felt like “the blind leading the blind” with the lack of experience between Chandler and the other recent hires to the oversight office.
“We have no one with any oversight experience running this ship for more than six months,” Gilbert-Smith said. “Would you get on a plane without a pilot? Would you get on a boat without someone with boating experience?”
In a recent board meeting, Chandler acknowledged she hasn’t been to the scene of every officer shooting to provide oversight. That prompted at least one board member to visit a scene on his own to ensure oversight was represented.
McClary has said she or a staffer from her office went to nearly all officer shootings.
“We’re struggling to be as effective as we were last year, last summer,” said Dee Wadsworth, who represents Cara Mendelsohn’s Far North Dallas district on the board.
Tension, confusion
In February, tensions came to a head.
Near the end of oversight’s monthly meeting, Chandler told the board she’d received a legal opinion from the City Attorney’s Office stipulating members can’t review anything that hasn’t first been investigated by DPD.
Members erupted. That meant the way the board had interpreted the ordinance that governs the office and acted the previous three years was incorrect, they said. That made them toothless, they added, since DPD’s internal affairs division would act as a gatekeeper for all complaints.
“This seems to fundamentally change what the board is,” Friedman said at the meeting. “What’s the point of a citizen filing a complaint with the police oversight board if IAD can override that complaint? Why doesn’t the citizen just go complain to IAD? What’s the point of the board?”
Under that understanding, Lane’s case would never have been brought to oversight, Rivas said. Dallas police initially declined to open an investigation into Lane’s complaint.
Under questioning by the board, Chandler said DPD brought the issue to her attention and she requested a review from the city attorney’s office. She said the document she got in response was “confidential” and she wasn’t going to “name names” about who rendered the opinion.
“I’ve got real problems with this,” Rivas said at the meeting. “For over two years, we have been operating incorrectly and I just have a question for our city manager, city attorney’s office, both of them — how they allowed that to happen?”
Activists watching in the audience audibly groaned and laughed in disbelief. Board members dropped their heads in their hands, or looked up to the ceiling and sighed in frustration. A representative from the city attorney’s office was not at the meeting.
“I don’t know that we get pushed around by secret lawyers who aren’t here and didn’t write us anything and whose names you won’t tell us,” added board member Alison Grinter Allen, who was appointed by council member Paula Blackmon.
Amid the turmoil, Broadnax joined the meeting through an impromptu appearance on Zoom.
He told the board nothing had changed about the ordinance and oversight has the ability to do independent investigations. He said he’d need to talk to the city attorney’s office about what power oversight has if DPD decides not to investigate a complaint, adding it’s “not clear.”
Afterward, activist Dominique Alexander, president of the Next Generation Action Network, told the board many cities have more functional police oversight than Dallas. Alexander was one of the leading advocates for an overhaul of the previous board.
“I ain’t never been more disappointed a day in my life than what I saw at this foolishness,” Alexander said. “I sacrificed a lot for this office to be created. This is a dog and pony show.”
Weeks later, in a 15-page report dated March 6, 2024, that was obtained by The News, Chandler told the board the city attorney’s new interpretation was “sound and legally correct” — oversight is not allowed to review complaints that DPD deemed a “no investigation.”
She acknowledged that interpretation has a “crippling effect” on oversight’s power, and suggested tweaks to the ordinance that she said could fix confusing language and allow the board to return to its yearslong practice. Any ordinance changes would need to be approved by the City Council.
She said the ordinance was “intentionally designed with gaps that needed further edits and clarifications” because the stakeholders, such as the activists who came up with recommendations for the overhaul, were “under a time crunch” and opted for language “that could pass with the least resistance before momentum was gone.”
“DPD and the City were given the power to interpret the gray areas of the Ordinance and did so, accordingly,” Chandler wrote. “The stakeholders made those concessions and we are witnessing the consequences.”
In conclusion, she wrote, the board needs to accept that “the prior processes and procedures” it relied on “were not in line with the ordinance.” She said the right approach to fixing the issue depends on “the type of fight” the board and office are willing to go through.
“[Oversight’s] only answer,” she said, “is to move forward by fixing the Ordinance.”
Grinter Allen, the board member for Blackmon’s district, told The News she’s not sure whose opinion is reflected in the document, but “it’s essential that we press for an interpretation of the ordinance that allows the board and the office to actually conduct meaningful oversight.”
“This kind of capitulation doesn’t reflect the letter of the law,” Grinter Allen said, “nor does it reflect the spirit of the community that established community police oversight in Dallas.”
‘Serious’ oversight
Civilian police leaders told The News it’s common for cities that launch oversight offices to experience high turnover and communication issues in the early stages of development.
Usually, there’s widespread buy-in from city leaders who see the establishment of an oversight office as “the politically expedient thing to do,” said Cameron McEllhiney, executive director of the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement.
Then, it’s easy to get immediate pushback, McEllhiney said.
“We’ve talked to a lot of cities who are in similar situations,” she said. “The power has been stripped from them or budgets have been stripped down or they may not be able to do the work because they’re not getting full cooperation from stakeholders.”
The city of Dallas has to decide whether it wants to engage in “serious” police oversight, McEllhiney said. If it does, it may have to start over, she said — the office would need to return to levels of staffing and investigative processes in place a year ago.
“Unfortunately, it’s kind of a build back up process,’’ she said. “You’ve got to start at the base, where it is about building legitimacy.”
Jayson Wechter, a civilian oversight practitioner and advocate for more than 40 years, said he encountered similar obstacles when he helped establish San Francisco’s Office of Citizen Complaints, now known as the Department of Police Accountability.
He left after a year because it was apparent the agency had ineffective management and inadequate resources and staff to carry out its mission.
There was also inadequate preparation. The office did not have in place a series of policies and procedures, he said. As a result, the deluge of cases quickly overwhelmed its inadequate staff.
Fifteen years later, he returned as an investigator to the office. At that point, it had an effective leader and sufficient staffing and resources, Wechter said. He stayed over 19 years.
Wechter said many large cities have embraced oversight because they’ve learned it provides “an important bridge” to residents — ensuring law enforcement agencies have positive relationships with the community and are serving people effectively.
Even so, what is happening in Dallas — delayed investigations, staff turnover, communication gaps — is often inevitable, he said.
“The establishment of civilian oversight is a significant change,” he said. “There could be a lot of fear, misunderstanding.”
The path forward
As challenges to achieve oversight have continued to mount in Dallas, some board members — like Higgins — believe the most viable path forward is in being more aggressive.
Higgins pointed to the DyNell Lane case as an example, saying every meeting has felt like “Groundhog Day” with members venting about how long the investigation has gone on.
At some point, Higgins said, it must go past expressions of frustration.
“There needs to be fire, a sense of urgency put under the board,” he said.
“They need to remember that even though it may not feel like it, they could be making decisions in there that could potentially save someone’s life, keep somebody from being injured, keep someone from being arrested that shouldn’t be arrested.”
The chief said DPD is looking for its own blind spots. He pointed to initiatives including the department’s new constitutional policing unit and a use-of-force dashboard and analysis unveiled last year.
“I certainly don’t want to leave readers or people thinking that we’re a department that we think we’re perfect,” García said. “I know we’re not. Which is the reason why I’m bringing in outside experts to let us know where we can be better. … From a board perspective, this isn’t a department that you need to push to be better. We know that, and we’re trying.”
In one of few signs of progress they’d seen in months, the oversight board in February took on a new oversight board chairman, approved by the City Council. John Mark Davidson was appointed by the mayor and had been a board member for about two years.
Davidson and other board members said they are saddened by the city’s effort to weaken the office, adding they can’t do oversight without adequate communication from the city about personnel changes and investigations.
And they need investigators and others to help them manage complaints.
“There’s been a lack of love and investment,’’ Davidson said. “It’s almost like the city has lost faith in the importance of what this office can do.”
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