On the cost-benefit analysis of enforcing sex-offender registry conditions vs. investigating violent crime
Dallas PD has shut down its monitoring unit charged with driving around to make home checks for people on the sex-offender registry, reported WFAA’s Tanya Eiserer in somewhat breathless tones. The story quickly devolved into Chief David Brown’s critics taking pot shots at him for being soft on sex offenders, or whatever.
In general, Grits adores Tanya’s work. Her oeuvre from the Dallas News was magnificent and her switch to TV at WFAA, along with another Morning News expat, producer Jason Trahan, immediately vaulted that station to boasting probably the best TV crime coverage in the state, IMHO. But here, the impulse to portray conflict on TV may have overcome better journalistic instincts. (It’s apparently pretty easy to get cops, especially union officials, to say nasty things about the Dallas chief these days.) She essentially portrays an argument among cops (all the sources) on the cops’ narrow terms of debate.
What the article didn’t address is whether enforcing registry conditions on this group is a truly useful way for DPD officers to spend their time. Chief Brown says he will deploy those detectives to a “violent crimes task force.” Mightn’t that be a better use of their time from a risk-cost-safety perspective?