There are countless perspectives on what makes a community safe. Plenty of people have opinions about what makes good policing.
For former Dallas Police Department Sergeant Moises Ochoa, what made him a good officer was showing up – walking, breathing, and knowing the streets he served. Especially when it came to Deep Ellum.
He worked in the neighborhood in the 1990s and 2000s, moving around in DPD.
“I used to be in traffic. So, we used to go there and do a lot of enforcement of the same thing, trying to keep the area safe,” he says. “I liked Deep Ellum because it’s very eclectic. You can see America there because everybody is hanging out there.”
He also developed relationships with business owners, a natural thing to do for anyone who’s spending time walking around the neighborhood, and also something one can’t achieve from behind a desk or in a patrol car. In 2010 and 2011, he started speaking with an owner of the Bomb Factory about DPD not having enough officers to respond to certain calls.
“She came to me and asked, ‘What is it that we could do to benefit development?’ And, basically, I brought the idea to them of the ENP program for Deep Ellum only,” he says. “I told them it was very important to have people who took a lot of pride in being a cop.”
That was the case for Moises, who brought officers who cared for Deep Ellum, not just clocked in, he says. He was the supervisor and ran the Enhanced Neighborhood Patrol for four and a half years, growing the group from five to about 15 officers before he retired in 2021.
“I had great relationships with the business owners. I take a lot of pride in that,” he says. “We did a good job while I was there, and that was my goal.”
It was his approach everywhere he served, not just Deep Ellum.
“Anytime I worked in an area as a cop, I took ownership of the area. I made sure I got to know the people, stakeholders, the residents, because being a cop, it is impossible for us to solve crimes without the community,” he says. “I always made it my point of being approachable. I was very fair with people.”
Once that relationship was established, it was easier for people to go to him, a critical part of effective community policing.
Moises has since retired – he was able to set his goal of retiring at 50, worked hard, and made it happen. He lives in Mexico now, surely living the dream in the country where he was born. He moved when he was 17, served in the US Army, earned a degree, and spent the rest of his career protecting Dallas.
Looking back, Moises doesn’t talk about tickets, arrests, or statistics. He talks about people – the restaurant owners who offered him a meal, the residents who stopped him to share what they were seeing, and the officers he pushed to take pride in their work.
For him, Deep Ellum wasn’t just a beat. It was a responsibility, and a community he was proud to protect.
