Murders are still up by more than 13% in Dallas compared to last year. That comes out to about 25 more murder victims when stacked up against 2022. According to the Dallas Police Department, the increase in murders is being driven by arguments and conflicts (no, duh).
The murder rate is just one reason the city ranked low on WalletHub's list of safest cities: No. 165 of 182 cities.
As Dallas grapples with its murder rate and tries to flatten the trend, the work is showing some promise. The department's three-part violent crime reduction plan that’s in the works includes a short-term hot spots policing strategy, a mid-term place network investigations (PNI) strategy and a longer-term focused deterrence strategy. The deterrence strategy involves reaching out to past offenders with an offer to connect them with resources for jobs, educational information and other services.
The PNI Task Force looks into high-crime areas across the city, mostly apartment complexes. Since July 2022, the task force has made 164 arrests, resulting in 203 felony charges. The team also took 114 firearms off the streets, and the department was able to get even more guns off the street with a recent gun buyback event.
Dallas Police major Jason Scoggins told members of the city’s public safety committee during a meeting on Monday that aggravated assaults are down by 15%, which translates to more than 1,000 fewer victims this year as compared to last year. He noted that gun crimes are also down by 12%. “That leads to a pretty significant drop in violent crime,” Scoggins said.
But reducing murders remains an obstacle.
“We’ve had our challenges this year, particularly with murder being higher than it was last year,” Garcia said at the public safety committee meeting. “When we talk about aggravated assault, and I’ve mentioned this before, each aggravated assault we have is literally an attempted murder.”
He said seeing the number of aggravated assault victims down by over a thousand compared to last year, as well as the other reductions, is a step in the right direction. “It’s a testament to the work that the men and women are doing every day,” Garcia said. “It’s a testament to the support that we receive from all of you on council and the city manager’s office, our community.”“There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. There’s just another tunnel." – Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia
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But Garcia said the work never stops. “There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. There’s just another tunnel,” Garcia said.
Dallas City Council member Cara Mendelsohn, chair of the public safety committee, pointed out that these reductions come after reductions in the two prior years. “It gets harder as the years go on to keep reducing,” she said. Mendelsohn asked the department to name one thing that could help reduce violent crime even further in the city.
“Staffing,” Garcia responded. Department personnel recently went to Chicago looking for new recruits. Mendelsohn was in attendance as well. Speaking to Mendelsohn, Garcia said, “You saw firsthand how hard our recruiters are working.” But he said the department is also trying to focus on officer retention. “It’s also ensuring that our men and women are happy here so they don’t go elsewhere,” he said. “So, we’re looking at ways to make working conditions better for our men and women that are here.”
According to NPR, an economist at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service named Morgan Williams and his colleagues did research to determine the effect of adding one officer to patrol a city. They found that adding one new officer to a city’s police department could prevent between 0.06 and 0.1 homicides. That means the average city would have to hire between 10 and 17 new police officers to save one life a year. Morgan and his colleagues estimated that doing so could cost an additional $1.3 million to $2.2 million every year.
Other Texas police departments are facing similar staffing challenges. The Fort Worth Police Department, for example, is trying to fill 150 vacancies, according to NBCDFW. The Austin Police Department is down some 300 officers as of September, according to ABC affiliate KVUE. As of last year, the Houston Police Department was also trying to fill hundreds of positions. Garcia has said before that DPD is short at least 600 patrol officers.
“We need to grow as a department," Garcia said. "There’s no question about it.”
