Public Safety Doesn’t Start With a Badge — It Starts With a Paycheck

By Raymond E. Alford Jr.

Candidate for Dallas County Commissioner, District 2

Architect of the Pathways to Prosperity Initiative

For the past three years, Dallas residents have seen a steady stream of headlines involving crime on or around DART trains and stations. Shootings. Stabbings. Assaults. But beneath those tragic moments is a deeper, more persistent issue that rarely gets addressed with honesty: most crime on DART property isn’t violent — it’s economic.

Fare evasion.

Trespassing.

Loitering.

Drug use.

Theft.

Public intoxication.

Disorderly conduct.

These aren’t random acts. They are predictable outcomes of a system that funnels people into transit corridors with no job pathway, no training outlet, no accountability structure, and no economic future.

Dallas keeps responding to this reality with enforcement alone. More patrols. More citations. More arrests. And yet the same individuals show up at the same stations, committing the same non-violent offenses, week after week.

That’s not a policing failure.

That’s a pathway failure.

As County Commissioner, I don’t believe public safety is achieved by choosing between law enforcement or opportunity. We need both. But Dallas has spent decades investing almost exclusively in reaction — and almost nothing in prevention rooted in economic access.

That’s where Pathways to Prosperity comes in.

Pathways to Prosperity is not a slogan. It is a workforce-driven public safety strategy that treats employment, skills, and structure as crime-reduction tools. Instead of cycling people through citations and jail for non-violent offenses, we connect them to paid training, certifications, and direct job placement in industries that Dallas already needs workers for: construction, infrastructure, facilities maintenance, logistics, and office administration.

DART stations sit at the crossroads of our economic failures — but they can also become gateways to opportunity.

Imagine workforce hubs near transit corridors where individuals can be:

Assessed, not arrested

Trained, not ticketed

Employed, not excluded

This is how you reduce non-violent crime without lowering standards and without excusing behavior. Accountability still exists — but it’s paired with a real alternative.

You don’t fix fare evasion by writing more tickets to people who can’t afford them.

You fix it by giving people a reason — and the means — to participate.

Dallas County doesn’t need another task force, it needs pathways.

As Commissioner, my focus will be simple:

Build economic pipelines where crime currently concentrates, measure outcomes, and hold systems accountable for results.

When people have jobs, structure, and dignity, crime goes down — not because we demanded it, but because we designed for it.

Public safety starts long before the police arrive.

It starts with opportunity.