The Dallas Police Department announced a change in how it will receive reports for non-emergency offenses from July onwards in an effort to allocate more resources toward fighting violent crime.
In essence, the change entails that non-emergency crimes will have to be reported online, whereas it is currently optional to do so.
As explained in an instructional video demonstrating how DPD’s Dallas Online Reporting System (DORS) works, residents can file a police report through a portal open 24/7 on dallaspolice.net.
After a report is submitted, an email is issued to the reporter along with a tracking number that will allow them to follow up on its status.
Crimes including theft under $2,500, graffiti, credit card or debit card abuse, identity theft, or harassing phone calls can be reported through DORS. Emergencies should still be reported by dialing 9-1-1.
While the new reporting system will roll out on July 3, DPD is launching community outreach this week through a series of briefings, according to NBC 5.
The first outreach event to educate the public on how to use DORS is slated for June 15 at the Jack Evans Headquarters at 1400 Botham Jean Blvd. Community briefings are scheduled for 1 p.m., 3 p.m., and 4:30 p.m.
DORS, launched by DPD in 2020, aimed to make it “easier and more convenient” for the public to report non-emergency offenses to law enforcement.
Yet since its release, the online reporting platform has not seen much traction within the community.
DPD’s 911 administrator Robert Uribe explained, “Despite our best efforts, our DORS use and phone report usage remains low,” according to D Magazine.
Between 2019 and 2022, just over 19% of all calls fielded by DPD and in which an officer was dispatched were non-emergencies eligible for reporting through DORS.
The primary aim for mandatory transitioning to reporting non-emergency offenses via DORS is to lessen the burden faced by the City’s police force as it struggles to curb violent crime amid a staff shortage.
A memo from Deputy City Manager Jon Fortune to the City Council in May explained that requiring all non-emergency reports to be filed via DORS would free up 135,000 patrol hours or the equivalent of approximately 65 officers working full-time shifts.
Police Chief Eddie Garcia noted to The Dallas Express last month, “We need hundreds of more officers in the city of Dallas.”
Executive Assistant Chief David Pughes told reporters in 2020 that “the ideal number [for Dallas PD] would be … 3,500, 3,600 officers,” according to NBC 5.
Meanwhile, violent crime in Dallas continues to post strong numbers in 2023, with 3,322 logged by DPD in the first four months of the year, according to its crime analytics dashboard. Of these, 94 were homicides. More recent data is unreliable, the City told The Dallas Express, allegedly due to the ransomware attack against Dallas at the start of May.
DPD response times, as The Dallas Express has extensively covered, are equally grim. Averages for the first four months of 2023 show a response time of 13.8 minutes to the highest priority (P1) calls. The target is 8 minutes or less, yet only 50.7% of calls met this goal.
P2 calls averaged considerably longer during that same period, 91.1 minutes. These calls are incidents in progress that could lead to a potentially serious threat and also represent an immediate need for law enforcement intervention.
As DPD prepares to make DORS mandatory in July, it remains to be seen how this will impact officer response time and the violent crime rate.
Studies suggest that visible police patrols deter crime, especially when this involves hot spot policing.
For instance, when violent crime in Deep Ellum surged last year, a new police unit was allocated to the nightlife district through a joint initiative of the Deep Ellum Foundation and DPD, as The Dallas Express reported.