Dallas City officials said the decision to remove selected information about people who report crimes from the public view was the right call, and more redactions and delays in releasing information are currently being considered.
The city’s Police Chief, Chief Financial Officer, and the Data Analytics Director met with The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board and reporters about the decision.
Police Chief Eddie Garcia stated that the changes were being made at the suggestion of the FBI and four other individuals who were not named.
The decision for officials to redact the names and addresses from online crime reports was made without input from the Dallas City Council.
City officials also told the board they are currently considering two more changes to the public database. One would see a 24-hour delay in publishing the list of active calls showing where police are responding to crimes, while the other would redact information about suspects who are arrested.
The city’s Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Office Director, Brita Andercheck, told the board the changes would be brought before the City Council’s public safety committee for feedback once they have been finalized.
Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn reached out to The Dallas Morning News after the meeting, saying she had spoken with Chief Eddie GarcÃa and Assistant City Manager Jon Fortune and told them to forgo their plans for complete redaction.
Mendelsohn said she advised them to include complainants’ initials, the street names for single-family home addresses, and the full address for multifamily complexes without unit numbers instead.
Elizabeth Reich, Dallas’ Chief Financial Officer, said the decision to redact the information was not made based on a single incident but over the result of a year-long review. She added that officials made the decision after the FBI said it had concerns about the information made available to the public.
