Six years after an internal audit found the Dallas Police Department needed a better way to track off-duty hours worked by officers, the city plans to pay for a new system to manage and track the jobs.
The Dallas City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved a three-year, more than $815,000 contract with RollKall Technologies, a management scheduling software company that caters to law enforcement agencies. The Dallas Police Department getting a new automated system to track off-duty employment was one of the top recommendations of a 2018 city audit that criticized the agency’s lack of oversight of the program and found some officers were working extra jobs for more hours than their police work.
Off-duty jobs can include security work at large events, concerts, private businesses, parades and other events.
Kristin Lowman, a DPD spokeswoman, said the new third-party system is expected to streamline and simplify how off-duty job assignments are managed for officers, vendors and businesses.
“This includes job announcements, scheduling, invoicing and payment, compliance with department policies, and easy audibility of jobs,” Lowman told The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday. “The department is now planning the rollout of the platform, along with education and training for officers, vendors, and the public on the new technology.”
The police department estimated that officers work more than 135,000 secondary jobs outside of their normal police duties every year. The agency said that equals roughly more than 714,000 of extra work hours.
According to the 2018 audit, the benefits of an off-duty employment program include helping deter crime, supplementing police officers’ pay, and allowing for some reimbursement for the police department if assignments require the use of police uniforms, equipment or vehicles.
But the auditor’s office found the department didn’t follow its own rules when it came to overseeing requests and approval and tracking of off-duty jobs. The department couldn’t tell whether or not officers were working more hours than allowed, working at approved times and locations, or violating any other DPD regulations, the audit said. The police department at the time limited officers’ total work hours to 16 hours a day and 112 hours per week. The daily cap hasn’t changed since then, but the weekly limit is now 80 hours per week, according to the department’s general orders.
The audit also found that DPD’s automated system, called the Intelligent Workforce Management System, doesn’t include the actual off-duty hours officers worked, tell supervisors when work requests are pending approval, or allow supervisors to confirm whether officers aren’t working too many hours.
“It is virtually impossible to do accurate accounting and controls with the current IWM software that is utilized by the department until new software can be purchased and integrated,” said an October 2018 letter to the auditor’s office signed by then-acting police chief David Hughes and then-assistant city manager Jon Fortune agreeing to more than a dozen recommendations for improvements.
The department still uses the Intelligent Workforce Management System for requests and approval for off-duty police jobs, Lowman said.
In the hands of Chris Wolston, even the most ordinary object — a chair, lamp or credenza — becomes something more whimsical, playful and quirky.
The artist has built a stellar reputation in the design world for his anthropomorphic rattan chairs (complete with bums and feet). Yet the array of pieces on display in his first solo museum show at Dallas Contemporary reveals there’s much more to his oeuvre.
Displayed across four catwalks, reminiscent of a fashion show or drag ball, are sculpted chairs in terra-cotta adorned with metal insects, a bronze coffee table cast from leaves found in the artist’s garden and chairs inspired by the gestural limbs of supermodels. Handwoven carpets from Morocco on the walls are interspersed with video works highlighting Wolston’s process filmed by his husband, the filmmaker David Sierra. Together, they recall a fantasy world of objects both functional and sculptural.
“I always find that through humor, there’s an interesting entry point for people — it breaks down a barrier,” says artist Chris Wolston. “And I was always drawn to furniture as a medium because it’s accessible, it’s egalitarian.” Dallas Contemporary
Wolston has been walking the tightrope between craft and art with a humorous twist since he made his first terra-cotta chairs in 2014. Drawn to the relationship between materiality and everyday life, he naturally embraced furniture as his medium.
“I started working with the (contemporary design gallery) The Future Perfect, and then we started doing these body chairs for a chair show,” he says. “I always find that through humor, there’s an interesting entry point for people — it breaks down a barrier. And I was always drawn to furniture as a medium because it’s accessible, it’s egalitarian.”
Having initially studied glassmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, Wolston earned a Fulbright to study pre-Columbian ceramics in Colombia, prompting him to settle his studio in the city of Medellín. He found his entry point into raw ingredients by working with natural terra-cotta clay found in the mountains surrounding the city, and has since cycled through bronze, rattan, anodized aluminum and shearling.
Curated by Glenn Adamson, former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Profile in Ecstasy highlights a decade-plus of work that led Wolston to discover the throughlines behind his various collections, whether they be nods to fashion and nature, Spanish modernism or subtle surrealism.
“These themes that exist in an artist’s practice emerge when a new collection emerges,” Wolston says. “It’s interesting to see how collections made at different times with totally different materials and thought processes at play resonate with one another.”
Chris Wolston: Profile in Ecstasy is on view at Dallas Contemporary from Nov. 7 through Feb. 1, 2026.
The vehicle belonging to a Dallas woman who has been missing for over a year was found this week, according to police.
The Dallas Police Department said 88-year-old Myrtle Polk’s vehicle was found in the 5600 block of South Lancaster Road, near Five Mile Creek, on Tuesday. Her body was not in the vehicle.
DPD said search teams will deploy in the area to continue the search for Polk.
She was last seen in early June along Indian Creek Trail, driving her Lexus sedan. At the time, a Silver Alert was issued, given her age and medical history, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Polk is a devout member of her church, according to her family. When she didn’t show up for service on June 9, 2024, they said they knew something was wrong.
Also affectionately known as “Mama M” or “Aunt Myrt,” Polk is living with dementia. But her niece Tawana Watson said — as late as the day before — the family did not indicate that anything was wrong.
“She was a very good driver, she knew where she was,” Watson said last June. “I talked to her that Friday [and] she was in her right mind.”
Watson does not believe the matriarch left home on her own.
“She was such a trustworthy person, I believe that Aunt Myrtle met somebody that she trusted, she let them [into her home] and they hurt her,” she continued.
Myrtle Polk is approximately 5-foot-2 and 120 pounds, with white hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or the Dallas Police Department at (214) 671-4268.
A four-alarm fire at First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, destroyed its historic, red-brick sanctuary last year, and reconstruction of the edifice won’t be completed until Easter 2028. In the meantime, the destruction has taught the nonprofit institution a lot about its workplace as it has navigated the crisis.
Staff members were “scattered” after the fire, and as of August, permanent power still hadn’t been restored to the church offices, said Ben Lovvorn, First Baptist’s senior executive pastor. So, keeping everyone updated and encouraged during the rebuilding effort has been a priority.
“We’ve been very purposeful about communicating with our staff — and our congregation — so that they know and understand what’s going on, and that they are a part of the process,” he said. “At other organizations, this situation would lead to tremendous turnover, but our entire team has stayed intact. That [in turn] has provided consistency and encouragement to our 16,000 church members.
“Another lesson we’ve learned is making sure you have the right people in place so you’re able to handle a crisis like this,” he continued. “Finding those right people — and getting them in the right seats on the bus — is key to tackling whatever obstacles you’re presented with along the way.”
Fortunately, First Baptist has had those team members in place for a while. That’s because the staff has a biblically based, “shared faith and shared calling” that gives their work purpose, Lovvorn said. “Whether they’re a minister or work in our accounting department or in the facilities department, they’re part of something greater.”
That greater meaning is emphasized regularly, whether through monthly all-staff leadership luncheons — they brought in Babe’s Chicken for the one in August — or at “staff chapel,” where workers step away from the daily grind and pray together. Throughout its more than 155 years in downtown Dallas, “there have been good times and difficult times” for First Baptist, Lovvorn said. “But God has always been faithful in providing for us and seeing us through every season.”
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