Four Dallas police officers were injured while responding to a shooting call early Thursday morning.
The four officers had been part of a unit dispatched to the 3100 block of Community Drive near Overlake Park and Dallas Love Field in Northwest Dallas after receiving reports of shots fired in a residence. This is in District 6, which is represented by Council Member Omar Narvaez and has seen a year-over-year uptick in crime of over 2%, according to crime data from the City.
One male victim was discovered upon police’s arrival and transported to a local hospital for a gunshot wound to the leg. His condition was last reported as stable, according to WFAA.
The suspect, Angel Morales, 22, had taken refuge inside the home and allegedly refused to come out.
The street was barricaded as the officers worked at the scene to establish a perimeter and coax the suspect out.
Soon after, a driver allegedly took a side street bypassing Dallas Fire-Rescue’s equipment on the road and crashed into a police vehicle.
The marked police SUV, occupied by an officer at the time, then slammed into three nearby officers.
All four officers were taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital for non-life-threatening injuries and have since been released.
The driver — said to have been Christopher Martinez, 45 — allegedly attempted to flee the scene but was taken into custody, according to NBC 5 DFW. A field sobriety test conducted at the scene suggested that he had not been driving while under the influence.
Morales also allegedly attempted to flee the scene by slipping away through a window but was detained, according to WFAA.
Martinez has since been charged with four counts of aggravated assault and four counts of passing an authorized emergency vehicle.
Dallas’ City-run crime analytics dashboard has logged over 18,563 assault crimes as of September 14, with 4,746 considered aggravated assault cases. Texas Penal Code distinguishes aggravated assaults from simple assaults by virtue of them causing serious bodily harm to the victim or involving a deadly weapon, which can be a vehicle.
As recently reported in The Dallas Express, Downtown Dallas has seen significantly more reported crimes than the downtown area of neighboring Fort Worth.
While Fort Worth utilizes not only a dedicated police unit but also private security officers to police its center, Dallas is strained by an ongoing officer shortage within the Dallas Police Department.
“Dallas needs an additional ~1,000 police officers to bring crime levels in line with Ft. Worth,” read a press release from the Metroplex Civic & Business Association, which recently conducted a comparative analysis of the two cities’ centers.
Similarly, a previous City analysis noted that the population size of Dallas required a force of approximately 4,000 officers to effectively police, yet the DPD currently operates with roughly 3,100 sworn officers.