The Arlington City Council convened in special session on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, at 2:15 p.m. in the Council Briefing Room. The meeting included an executive session (closed to the public) on real property and economic development negotiations, followed by a public work session and issues session. Key topics included preparations to combat human trafficking during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, an economic development quarterly report, a data management policy for Flock Safety automated license plate readers, committee reports, and a heated discussion about the Regional Transportation Council (RTC) and the North Central Texas Council of Governments (COG) dispute over transportation governance.
Police Chief Al Jones and Sergeant Tarik Muslimovic (head of the Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit) presented a comprehensive plan. Key points:
Marty Wieder, Executive Director of the Arlington Economic Development Corporation (AEDC), gave a quarterly update. Highlights:
Police Chief Jones presented the data retention policy. The city retains ALPR data for 30 days; data is property of the city and used only for criminal investigation. Chief Jones differentiated from red‑light cameras (outlawed for automated traffic enforcement) by noting Flock cameras capture only license plates visible in public, not personal information. Data is shared with other North Texas agencies (e.g., Grand Prairie, Fort Worth, Dallas) with mutual consent. Private entities (apartments, HOAs, Walmart) also use Flock cameras. Councilmember Pham praised the system for solving crimes; Chief Jones noted a 100% homicide clearance rate in 2025 was enabled by this technology. City Manager Yelverton added that the city is just one user; many private enterprises operate cameras independently.
The committee could not meet due to lack of a quorum. Councilmember Boxall, who will not be on the next council, advocated for adoption of Texas Senate Bill 2835 (single‑stair residential buildings), arguing it would allow smaller apartment buildings (up to 20 units), revitalize corridors like Collins Street, and prevent large complexes from assembling land for “Texas donuts.” Councilmember Odom‑Wesley noted safety features and affordability benefits. No formal action taken.
Councilmember Boxall reported on two items:
Mayor Ross deferred the topic to the external committee reports.
Meeting adjourned at 5:06 p.m.
We're gonna go ahead and call the afternoon session of the city council meeting to order. Humanseo, oochio, and L'autre, Humanseo, I'm not, I'm not, Iumanseo, I'm not L, Lanseo, oochio, clear. L'homme, L'humanity, o Humanity. Humanseo, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. L'autre l'offre, l'autre, l'autre Oh Alright, we're gonna go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order. We're gonna move on down the 3.1 target for Chief, you gonna do this. I'm a sergeant with me. Alright. Good afternoon, Mayor Council Al Jones, Chief of Police. Today we're represent uh presenting the human trafficking. As Arlington, we prepare to welcome the World Cup in FIFA for 2026. We know that the spotlight is going to be on our city. In anticipation, our human trafficking strategies that is aimed at making Arlington not only a welcome host city, but a safe one. I'll turn the presentation over to Sergeant McSlamovich, who oversees our human exploitation and trafficking. Sir, good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Uh my name is Terek Maslamovich, and I'm a sergeant with the Arlington Police Department, and I currently oversee our human exploitation and trafficking unit. So again, thank you for this opportunity to talk about what our efforts are going to be this uh June and July, specifically as we uh look forward to the FIFA Raw Cup and what that's gonna bring to our city and how we will stand up to uh disrupt human trafficking. Is there a there's got it? Thank you. Okay, I think it's appropriate to start off by just discussing a little bit about what human trafficking is. Uh the most common thing that I uh get is that human trafficking and human smuggling are identical, and there certainly are not. Uh we need to understand that human trafficking is a crime against a person, and that's what we investigate. Uh, while human smuggling is uh crime against our borders. So there's a distinct difference between those two, but to further identify what human trafficking is, it is um two components. There is commercial sex trafficking, and then there's labor trafficking. And in order to prove either one of those, we have to prove up the force fraud or coercion, or if the victim is under the age of 18. And back in 2003, around springtime, through uh leadership of Chief Jones, we're fortunate to be able to stand up our unit, our heat unit. And that unit's makeup is currently five detectives, a sergeant, and we also have a digital component involved where um we have a digital forensics lab at the Alliance for Children to examine our uh cell phones, computers, and other other digital forensics components. When we were building this unit and we're looking how we can make it uh make it relevant to the our current time and age as it relates to human trafficking, we followed the four pillars that were created in 2021 by the White House. These pillars were prevention, protection, prosecution, and then cross-cutting approaches, which is essentially partnerships. We built our unit off of those four pillars uh to uh protect those vulnerable people in our city, hold those suspects accountable, but we spend a large amount of time educating our citizens and our stakeholders within the city on what human trafficking is, and we'll touch on that here in just a little bit. So the big uh topic at hand is FIFA World Cup. We know it's uh international large event. Uh it's gonna draw a lot of international presence, it's gonna uh viewership across the world. Um we know it's gonna bring a lot of uh visitors to our city, and we welcome them, right? Uh but the thing that is, I think so important to mention, we're not uh city that's new to h hosting large events, and we're certainly not uh new to uh running operations around major events. I can go as recent as April when we had NDCAR here in our city and we ran human trafficking operations. So uh we are ready in that regard uh because we said we had now a couple years to really run some of our efforts to disrupt uh and protect those here visiting our city. So why does it matter and why do large-scale events matter? What's one thing is it brings a large crowd. What we know is uh human trafficking suspects generally will seek large gatherings because that will keep their business of the criminal enterprise going. They go to those events where there is a demand and then they exploit victims uh in that regard. We know that traffickers explored through hotels, transportation, and online platforms. We're in 2026, uh human trafficking has changed drastically, and it's certainly shifted to the online presence that we're very familiar with in my unit. So our focus uh for FIFA specifically, and it this is true for really our general response to human trafficking, is recovering victims, connecting them with victim service providers. We do a really good job as police officers to hold those suspects accountable, give the prosecutors a fantastic case and take it to trial and get those guilty verdicts. But it is so important that we connect them to victim service providers because that is when the victim can get the chance to get out of that lifestyle and and begin their healing journey. As I mentioned, holding suspects accountable is kind of our second goal, and the third one is we're gonna focus on sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and child exploitation. Our unit's goal is not to just focus on human trafficking but the general child exploitation umbrella. So we can we have to keep both encompassed because there's such a bleed over in those two categories.