No. 1 With a Bullet

Welcome to America's crime capital

A A A Comments By Jim Schutze Thursday, Jul 31 2003

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What could drive up property values and fatten city coffers more than reducing people's fear of crime? Speaking of his own street in the Greenville Avenue/Park Lane area, where he says values have been badly hurt by crime, Stephens said, "You could hire full-time police walking up and down Holly Hill for the savings you would get in extra tax revenue."

Garcia's idea seems good. Scour DPD from top to bottom: Figure it out. Miller's idea is great: focus, focus, focus. And Stephens is right, too: There are huge payoffs for getting it right. It's just so scary that it didn't get fixed long ago, and instead it's getting worse.

Dallas is No. 1 among big U.S. cities for all crime and No. 2--behind Chicago--for most violent crimes, according to FBI reports. The chart above shows the number of all crimes per 100,000 population and the number of murders, robberies and aggravated assaults per 100,000 people. (We've excluded rapes from the violent crime category since not all cities report those numbers to the FBI.)

Peter Calvin

Dr. Elba Garcia, chairwoman of the city council public safety committee, says the city needs to "open the Pandora's box and clean it out."

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