Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia speaks at Tuesday's Public Safety Committee meeting | Photo provided by the City of Dallas
Dallas police highlighted a significant drop in violent crime over the past year in a presentation to the Dallas Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.
Overall violent crime for the first seven months of 2024 is down 13.3% compared to the same period last year, continuing a downward trend that began in January 2021 when DPD first implemented its Violent Crime Reduction Plan. “Violent crime” includes criminal homicide, aggravated assault, sexual assault and robbery.
Murders were down 21.3%, aggravated assaults down 18%, and robberies down 3.9%. Analysis of robbery data showed that private robberies were down 9.4%, but store robberies were up 20.9%. Police say more than a third of store robberies were the result of shoplifting incidents that escalated into robbery.
According to data from the Dallas Crime Analysis Dashboard, as of Aug. 27, fondling incidents were down 18.8%, rapes were down 39.4%, and reports of forced intercourse were down 31.3%, but the category of sexual assault with an object was up 58%.
While police's focus on violent crime appears to be paying off, some categories of nonviolent crimes are on the rise: simple assaults are up slightly at 0.6 percent, drug and narcotics violations are up 8 percent, shoplifting is up 14 percent, kidnappings are up 12.1 percent, and identity theft is up 13.4 percent.
Dallas has long been a hotbed of car theft, as previously reported by the Dallas Express. However, car thefts have been on the decline so far this year, down 15.2%. However, the city has recorded nearly 10,000 car thefts so far this year, and Dallas Police still have a lot of work to do in the area.
Additionally, vehicle thefts, while down 18.4%, remain high, with more than 7,000 incidents reported this year.
DPD's violent crime reduction plan focuses on increasing police visibility in high-crime areas of the city, based on crime analysis and mapping, and the department also provides regular “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design” assessments to highlight areas where measures like trimming hedges, improving lighting or adding security gates would be effective.
The department noted that 43 percent of streetlights in high-risk areas have been switched to brighter LED lights and that nighttime violent crime has fallen 28.1 percent over the past seven months.
Police Chief Eddie Garcia praised his officers for their success in reducing violent crime in the city.
“If we see a four-year trend (of decreasing crime) in the top 10 cities, I'd love to see it,” he said.
Despite these gains, DPD remains short by about 1,000 officers and operates with a much smaller budget than other high-crime cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, according to a city analysis to date.
