Dallas Area Rapid Transit is withholding important crime statistics, according to Dallas City Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is keeping vital crime data from the public, Mendelsohn told The Dallas Express. She previously asked agency officials to post current data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) – but they chose not to follow through.
“I’ve requested multiple times for them to post their crime stats in the format that organizations report to the FBI,” Mendelsohn said. “I think they are using NIBRS – they’re not posting the report.”
The agency sometimes provides general overviews of crime in its services, such as in the DART Police Quarterly Updates. But while Dallas updates its NIBRS crime dashboard daily, DART apparently only posted these reports as recently as 2022.
“I’m looking for the full assortment of how crimes are classified, so that we can compare apples to apples,” Mendelsohn said. “If they’re reporting something terrible like a rape, we may not have that in our statistics, and we need to know the totality of what’s happening.”
DART Representative Jeamy Molina told The Dallas Express that DART uses 210 members of the agency’s police force, 100 transit security officers, and 54 fare enforcement officers to keep the services safe.
“Our NIBRS reports are sent to DPS,” Molina said. “DART is investing in security measures to help ensure our system is safe. We have our agency security strategy, an offshoot of our strategic plan that focuses on providing safe service across our member cities.”
The Dallas Express followed up, asking specifically why DART doesn’t post recent NIBRS data on its webpage.
Molina repeated that “NIBRS reports are sent to DPS.”
“I’d like to see the NIBRS report and have it publically accessible” Mendelsohn said. “I hope DART will share with its member cities what crime statistics are occurring on the system.”
DART’s Reluctance to Share NIBRS Data
During a joint meeting in 2023, Mendelsohn asked DART Police Chief Charles Cato if DART was reporting all its crimes in NIBRS.
“Is that posted on the DART website so that anybody could view how you’re doing?” Mendelsohn asked.
“I believe it’s posted, yes,” Cato replied.
Mendelsohn claims the crime data was not posted.
“Like we have all of our information for DPD available to the public, is there a way to view instances when somebody is killed?” Mendelsohn said. “I know I can see it federally, but it’s generally six months later.”
“I’ll get with our communications team about developing a link to put it out there, so it can be seen,” Cato replied.
Since then, DART still only displays NIBRS data as recent as 2022.
“He said that it would be added, and it hasn’t,” Mendelsohn said. “They’re not sharing it.”
Local cities formerly used the CompStat format – which counts individual incidents – to track crime data, according to Mendelsohn. She said the more recent NIBRS format is more accurate, as it counts each victim.
“It’s the fairest way,” Mendelsohn explained, “because what people want to know is how many people were hurt, not how many incidents were there.”
Lack of Transparency in Crime Reporting
Mendelsohn said she is requesting NIBRS data from DART and college districts so that Dallas officials can understand the complete picture of crime across the city.
“I’d like to see the whole thing,” Mendelsohn said. “Obviously the city is the largest portion, but we are missing some nuggets, and we should know all the things that are happening. In DART’s case, the information they are reporting is showing increases all the time.”
DART crime has been increasing from January to March this year, according to a quarterly police report. In the second quarter, the most common offense was drug paraphernalia – followed closely by assault, then theft.
Case in point, on July 30, a suspect stabbed and killed a man, then fled on a nearby DART train. Hours later, officers finally found him – at a DART station 12 miles away.
Crime rates were still lower than the same time last year, but DART crime had increased 26 percent from FY 2022 to 2023, and then 56 percent from FY 2023 to 2024. As Fox 4 reported, a man with a machete threatened passengers on an early morning DART commute in 2024.
Michael Morris – a powerful transit bureaucrat who has picked up nicknames like “King of the Roads” and “King of Gridlock” – previously told The Dallas Express criticism of public transportation is “well-founded, well-grounded.”
“I think the case can be made that maybe the fare enforcement on the transit system has been lax,” he said. “You need to have fare enforcement to help ensure that the transportation system is safe,” said Morris.
Morris added that he thinks there has been “significant progress” to “increase enforcement” on Dallas public transit.
But mayors and officials from Plano, Carrollton, and Farmers Branch previously told The Dallas Express that DART lines have been bringing homeless people into their suburbs.
Damien LeVeck, executive director of Dallas HERO, recently told The Dallas Express he interviewed a mother of four who was “viciously attacked by a vagrant at a downtown DART station.”
LeVeck called DART stops “hives of violent crime and dens of homeless loitering and panhandling.”
“There is nobody to blame but the DART’s leadership, which has idly sat by and allowed this blight on our city to continue,” LeVeck added.
DART measures its police force by calls for service, the number of arrests, and average response time, according to Molina. The representative also encouraged riders to “be vigilant” with the agency’s “See Something, Say Something” anti-theft campaign.
“I think the public deserves the transparency of knowing what is happening in terms of safety incidents at DART,” Mendelsohn said.
“The sense I get from constituents who talk about DART is that there’s a security problem, and even with their initiative to hire more law enforcement, it’s still problematic,“ explained Mendelsohn.
Ridership and Service Struggles
DART is seeing “more calls for service” due to “an upward trend in ridership,” Molina said.
Public transit ridership among workers in Dallas-Fort Worth was just 1.3% in 2019, according to federal data. In Dallas County specifically, ridership held at a similar percentage of workers in 2023.
DART’s ridership in particular took a significant hit during COVID and has not been able to recover since, according to Mendelsohn.
“Since COVID, they have not been able to get their ridership back, so they’re still only at 80% of what they were before the pandemic,” she said.
DART ridership in Carrollton is down 33%, Mayor Steve Babick previously told The Dallas Express. Farmers Branch Mayor Terry Lynne also expressed concern over empty buses and trains.
Inequitable Funding and Operational Shortfalls
Dallas contributes the most out of all DART’s member cities, and gets a disproportionately large amount of services in return, as The Dallas Express previously reported. This leaves suburbs like Plano paying tens of millions of dollars more than they get back.
“I definitely acknowledge Dallas residents use DART way more than any of the suburbs – and Dallas pays more than any of the suburbs,” Mendelsohn said. “Are we getting the service we should for that amount of money? Or are there other ways to provide transportation options that are less expensive, and perhaps more reliable, safe, and convenient for our residents?”
Dallas holds a vast majority of seats on DART’s board, while some suburbs are forced to share a single representative, as The Dallas Express previously reported.
After member cities pursued legislation to reform DART’s funding and governance, the agency pledged to return some of its sales tax revenue in a General Mobility Program, as The Dallas Express previously reported. In order for cities to accept this funding, DART Chair Gary Slagel asked mayors to drop any future reforms.
DART’s General Mobility Program left the agency with a $42-43 million funding gap, triggering potentially the largest cuts in agency history. Though, as KERA reported, the agency dropped some of its more severe cuts in early August after public backlash.
“We have to continue to ask the questions and demand the service that our residents need to be able to get to work, to grocery stores, to their faith communities, to their doctor’s appointments,” Mendelsohn said. “The prices are going way up, the service is going down.”
Instead of cutting its own expenditures, DART is cutting services to riders, according to Mendelsohn. She suggested the agency could sell its parking garage and make its employees ride public transit. She also said DART could review its long roster of executive staff.
“These are cuts that they could make,” Mendelsohn said. “Instead, they’re choosing to cut elements that are important for their riders. I would like to see that the other way around.”