Arrests by the Dallas Police Department (DPD) plummeted last year, even as the total number of crimes committed in Dallas remained practically unchanged compared to 2021 and a renewed wave of violent crime in the first weeks of 2023 has put the City on its heels.
“We’re not trying to do more than take down the violent crime — no dragnet type approach or stop-and-frisk approach,” admitted DPD Police Chief Eddie Garcia, speaking with The Dallas Morning News.
According to the City of Dallas Open Data crime analytics dashboard, the dip in the number of criminal offenses reported in 2022 compared to 2021 was virtually insignificant — a mere 0.12%, with 107,849 crimes clocked in 2022, down 126 from the 107,975 logged the year before.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, DPD has gone all-in on its “Violent Crime Reduction Plan,” which uses statistical data to pinpoint crime hotspots throughout the city to identify where law enforcement efforts should be concentrated.
While the City touted a meager decrease in violent crime, it also reportedly logged a staggering 19% drop in arrests in 2022, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Data acquired by the news outlet indicated a drop from 9,876 arrests in 2021 to 7,983 in 2022. No additional information was available as to which categories of crime saw the steepest decreases in arrests.
DPD’s crime statistics dashboard, however, does provide some year-to-date information: As of Wednesday, January 25, there had been a 3.26% decrease in arrests compared to the first 25 days of 2022.
The categories with the steepest decrease in arrests, according to this data, primarily comprise “crimes against society,” which include drug offenses, weapon law violations, prostitution, and driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
It would appear that fewer criminals are being arrested, yet overall crime remains largely unchanged since the start of DPD’s Violent Crime Reduction Plan.
Violent crime, as defined by the Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines used by DPD and the FBI, represented roughly 10% of the reported offenses in 2022, and is trending up so far in 2023.
Last year’s property crimes, which accounted for about 61% of all reported offenses, rose by 2.6% year-over-year, exposing more Dallas residents to criminality and offsetting claims city officials might make that crime is under control.
And things are only looking worse a little more than three weeks into the new year.
As of Tuesday, according to DPD’s daily Compstat briefing NIBRS REPORT Compstat Daily V1 (2) (1), street robberies are up by 10%, aggravated assaults are up 11%, and murders spiked by 11%, all contributing to an overall increase of 5.47% in violent crime year-to-date over 2022.
Last month, The Dallas Express spoke with the executive director of Keep Dallas Safe, Jake Colglazier, who claimed to have some insight into the phenomenon.
“What we’ve been told by sources in DPD is that a lot of times the police, for certain offenses, don’t arrest for crimes they think won’t be prosecuted by the DA, so they don’t want to deal with the paperwork for no reason,” claimed Colglazier.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot has come under fire for his alleged “soft-on-crime” policies.
“Lots of residents we know don’t even call things in anymore,” claimed Colglazier. “It’s very dishonest of the mayor touting this huge accomplishment when crime is still high.”