By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Del Rio resident Ken Herrera challenged the city council to enact pay increases for Del Rio police officers and firefighters.
Herrera urged the pay increase during the citizen comments portion of Tuesday’s regular city council meeting.
He began his comments by speaking about local crime statistics.
Herrera told the council, “According to the crime statistics provided by the Del Rio Police Department, through an open records request, from Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2022, there was a total number of crimes reported in the National Incident Database Reporting System, Group A offense reports, of 1,288 separate offenses. These reports are categorized as crimes against persons, crimes against property and crimes against society.
“The statistics for the year 2023 show a grand total of 1,433 separate offenses or an increase in crime of 10.12 percent. Luckily, our police department still reports these crimes to the FBI, and that’s how we’re able to gather these stats, unlike 37 percent of the country’s largest cities that don’t even report their stats to the FBI,” Herrera said.
“In January of 2025, I will be requesting the NIBRS report to see if there will be another increase or if we will see a reduction of the crime rate here in Del Rio. What the numbers show should be of concern to all residents of the city and especially to you on council, since one of your main priorities is to keep citizens safe.
“By and large the available evidence increasingly tends to suggest that most types of crime tend to increase in levels of occurrence with increasing population density – population growth, just so you know,” he added.
Herrera then spoke about officer vacancies on the department.
“As many of you know, there has been a personnel shortage of police officers here in Del Rio for many years. Once trained, some of (the officers) hang around, some of them will move on to higher-paying departments, some will retire and those that retire, well, we’ll see what happens with those positions if they get filled or not,” Herrera said.
“Our officers in the police department and personnel in the fire department need to be well-compensated for the services they provide the city. After all, they haven’t had a pay increase in three years. We live in the greatest state in this nation, and these individuals deserve a substantial pay increase, not just an atta-boy or an atta-girl,” he said.
“Whoever is doing the collective bargaining agreement, whether it be Interim City Manager (Manuel) Chavez or the new city manager, Shawna Burkhart, or both, I don’t know, I hope the negotiations for both (police and fire) departments are fair and beneficial to all parties,” Herrera said.
Before leaving the speaker’s podium, Herrera also provided a brief lesson in how to pronounce the word ‘dais.’
“And finally, to some of you sitting on the seats on that raised platform, the word is pronounced ‘day-es,’ not ‘dye-es’,” Herrera finished.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
