Dallas’ serious crime problem, which includes a double-digit increase in murders year over year during the first four months of 2022, seems to be weighing on the minds of eligible voters.
In a poll conducted by The Dallas Express, respondents were asked to rank eight identified issues currently affecting the city based on what they believe the Dallas City Council should focus on.
Some of the options included increasing city transparency, increasing equity and inclusion among City employees, lowering property taxes, and increasing the number and quality of parks and museums. Far and away, though, respondents identified the need to reduce crime as the most pressing issue.
Of the eight options provided, reducing crime proved to be the respondents’ top concern, with 14.7% of those surveyed ranking it among their top three choices, beating out other significant issues like high property taxes and reducing excessive regulation.
Roughly 16.6% of respondents marked it as their first choice, ahead of increasing equity and inclusion among City employees and citizens, which got the second-most number-one rankings.
Looking at the average ranking across all eight issues, getting crime under control came in first, followed by increasing city/street cleanliness and then reducing homelessness and vagrancy.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the Dallas Police Department (DPD) has been suffering from a severe staffing shortage that City leaders cannot seem to resolve. The shortage has led to alarmingly high police response times over the last year amid an increasing number of calls for emergency services.
Dallas has also been enduring a shocking increase in murders since the new year, logging a 23.4% increase year-over-year as of May 1.
“There’s been an uptick in murder … that we’re still trying to catch up from the first quarter of the year, but certainly, you know, that’s something that you can’t reduce … without reducing [overall criminal] incidents,” DPD Police Chief Eddie Garcia told The Dallas Express in an interview this month.
More up-to-date statistics on crime in Dallas are currently unavailable, supposedly due to a ransomware attack against City servers and computer networks on May 3, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.