Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - It's the first thing Dallas police officers do when they come to work and many now worry it's become the most dangerous.  Parking.

Officers who can't afford to pay to park in a secure garage next to DPD headquarters say it's time for the city foot the bill.

"Am I going to walk out to the parking lot and my car blow up when I start it," Dallas homicide detective Scott Sayers asks rhetorically.

Sayers works out of DPD headquarters and knows one of the officers who had a bomb explode next to his patrol car.

"It absolutely floored me when I heard there was a pipe bomb planted underneath cars," says Sayers.

Like a lot of his fellow officers, Sayres finds the $400 a year cost of parking in the gated garage next door too expensive.  He and another officer who asked not to be identified, park in unprotected lots at their own risk.

"I'm definitely more worried.  I have a family I have to come home to," the officer says. "It's always been kind of weird for me for the past nine years when I did pay that I have to pay to go to work."

The city leases the parking garage from IBM and officers pay $31 per month for ID card access.

But while James Boulware's ambush on the Jack Evans Police Building will lead to security improvements, city leaders say free secure parking for officers may not be one if them.

"I think clearly we could do something to Jack Evans to make it more secure but just like (Police Chief) David Brown said a couple years ago, you don't want to make a fortress that separates itself from the people it serves," says Dallas City Councilman, Phillip Kingston.

But with the photos of explosions near police vehicles fresh on the minds of the 1,100 officers who work here, more officers like Sayres are now spending their own money to be safer.

"That's frightening that I could just simply go to my car that's parked outside and possibly not coming home to my family," says Sayers.

When the building opened in 2003, then Chief Terrell Bolton fought the city unsuccessfully for free officer parking in the garage.

(©2015 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)