Friday, August 17, 2018

Remembering Dicky Hickman


Words fail me. 

I just don’t know what words to use to describe how important Dicky Hickman was not just to his family and friends, but to our entire first responder family—police and firefighters alike.

As so many of us grieved at his passing  on Thursday, August 16, I wondered if the years faded the memories of what this great man did for all first responders and their families.

Let’s go back to 1978 when the city of Dallas refused to grant acceptable pay raises to its first responders and failed to work toward fair pay for safety (sound familiar?). 

Police and firefighters, under the direction of police & fire association presidents Bobby Joe Dale (police) and Don Greene (fire) came together and launched a joint committee with Dicky at the helm to push for a pay referendum that would give first responders $186 more a pay check.

As chair, Dicky was tasked with collecting 34,000 signatures in 60 days to force a referendum for a 15 percent pay hike. Police and firefighters garnered 65,200 signatures and the pay referendum was put on the ballot for January 20, 1979. 

Of course, the city did what the city does best:  It formed a “citizens” committee to come out against the pay referendum and misdirect voters. They threw around some fuzzy statistics that Dicky countered, telling The Dallas Morning News that all the city could do “is try and take figures and statistics and manipulate them to their use and confuse the people.”

The city's anti-pay committee claimed if citizens approved the referendum, they would be promoting the type of “fiscal irresponsibility” that plunged New York on the brink of disaster and caused Cleveland to default in December of 1978.  (Fast forward to today.  Aren't those comments eerily reminiscent of those dire forecasts by current Mayor Rawlings regarding the pension crisis about Dallas “walking into the fan blades of what might look like bankruptcy.” It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now.)

At every twist and turn and in every newspaper article, Dicky was the voice and the face for first responders and the pay referendum fight.  With a record voter turnout (the city predicted a low voter turnout), citizens listened to his message and overwhelmingly approved the 15 percent pay raise by 56.6 percent in January of 1979.  

Well, most citizens listened.  The referendum failed only in the affluent precincts. At the time, Dicky said, the business community “turned their backs” on public safety officers.  

“There will still be a scar left from the fact that the business community in Dallas went against us,” he told The Dallas Morning News. “They patted us on the back and told us what a good job we were doing. Then they turned their back on us.”

It would be a back that would continue to be turned against first responders throughout the years, throughout the decades old pay referendum lawsuits and on into our current pension battle.

In 1980, in a landslide vote, Dicky was elected as president of the Dallas Police Association where he served as its leader from 1980 to 1986.
  
During that time, police and firefighters joined forces again after then-City Manager Charles Anderson told first responders, “You need to do what you have to do” when they sought back pay and vacation time owed. 

And yes, Dicky and first responders did what we had to do and prevailed in the 1269 (riding in a higher class) lawsuit forcing the city to compensate first responders when they performed supervisory duties on a temporary basis and giving the additional five vacation days owed. 

As president, Dicky relentlessly championed Dallas police officers, always fighting for better benefits and working conditions as well as improving the safety of the citizens of Dallas. 

Under his leadership, officers won the right to have legal counsel before they were questioned in officer-involved shootings.  He also filed suit and won the right for all city employees to run for public office outside the city of Dallas.  He also challenged and won the right for city employees to participate in political campaigns.

He successfully fought against attempts to require first responders to live within the city of Dallas, and he held the line against civilian review boards.

And while he was just one man among many, he was the one man who stood tall against the city, making our blue line a little stronger and that much better. And that is how Dicky Hickman should always be remembered.

#Iwon'tforgetyou #backtheblue #savethepension #dickyhickman