Community Police Oversight Board members square off against Dallas Police Association President

Some members of the Dallas Community Police Oversight Board pushed back last week against Dallas Police Association president Mike Mata’s claims on a local talk radio show that they say disparaged the board. Mata, the head of the police department’s largest union, made the statements on WBAP 820’s The Rick Roberts Show on August 3. On the conservative radio station’s website, the description of the discussion reads: “210 police officers shot in the line of duty so far this year, 46 of them ambushes. All the BLM and ‘hands up-don’t shoot’ nonsense, these stats are no surprise. Mike Mata, President of the Dallas Police Association, joined Rick Roberts to talk about this dangerous trend of hating on cops that doesn’t seem to be slowing down.” On the show, Mata castigated the board for judging officers without understanding “what we do, nor have they taken any educational courses on our policy, our use of force continuum, or what our use of force (policies) are.” Mata also claimed that the board’s information on procedures and policy came from handouts.

Both board chair Jesuorobo Enobakhare and member Brandon Friedman disagreed with much of what Mata said on the show. “Mr. Mata is definitely peddling false truths,” Enobackhare said. Friedman posted a substantial Twitter thread refuting the DPA president’s claims. “Board members without armed public service experience are no less valuable than those who have it,” he wrote. “In many cases, their varied experiences make them more suited to overseeing armed public servants than if the Board were, say, all retired cops. I’m sorry Mr. Mata doesn’t get that.” There appears to be a fundamental difference in how the president of the Dallas Police Association sees the objectives of the board and who empowers it versus what the board is actually tasked with doing, and who it answers to. “When you listen to some of these hearings, it’s not about whether the officers follow policy, it’s not whether they followed the law,” Mata said in a phone call Friday. “It’s whether they’ve hurt somebody’s feelings and they felt like they could have been, you know, gentler or they could have been not understanding the situation that the officer was placed in. And there’s an avenue for that—it’s called internal affairs.”