Crime Boss of the Month Jesse Moreno’s District 2 clocked a double-digit increase in aggravated assaults in February, further attesting to the rise in violent crime in the first months of 2023.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, Moreno was recently named Crime Boss of the Month for the third time in five months for logging the biggest year-over-year Crime Score increase last month.
District 2, which encompasses the southside of Downtown, Old East Dallas, and the neighborhoods around Love Field Airport, saw a sharp 23.1% increase in assault offenses compared to February of 2022. However, aggravated assaults saw an even steeper increase, spiking 31.4%, according to the City of Dallas Open Data crime analytics dashboard.
There were also increases in the other two categories of assault offenses. Simple assaults ticked up by 5.1,% and assaults by intimidation shot up by 129.4%, more than doubling last February’s offense reports.
A similar increase occurred in Council Member Carolyn King Arnold’s District 4, where aggravated assaults increased by 32.3%, according to City data.
As reported in The Dallas Express, the Dallas Police Department (DPD) testified about the recent surge in aggravated assaults and murders before City Council’s Public Safety Committee, on which Moreno sits, during a Tuesday meeting.
DPD shared additional details with The Dallas Express about some of District 2’s reported aggravated assaults that contributed to the February statistics.
On February 11 at around 10:15 p.m., according to DPD Public Information Officer Juan Fernandez, police responded to a call in the 2200 block of South Harwood Street. A male victim had been “threatened with a knife by [a female] suspect after an argument.”
The incident log noted that the suspect said she was going to cut the man’s throat. It is unclear whether an arrest was made.
The very next day, DPD responded to another knife call in District 2. An argument had broken out between a man and a woman on the 5500 block of East Grand Avenue. The man brandished a knife and cut the woman’s face. Police arrived at the scene around 7:30 p.m. and arrested the male suspect.
These incidents are just two of the 46 aggravated assaults logged in Moreno’s district last month.
The Dallas Express sent a request for comment to Council Member Moreno’s office, but he did not respond by press time.
The Dallas Express, The People’s Paper, believes that important information about the city, such as crime rates and trends, should be easily accessible to you. Dallas has more crime per capita than hotspots like Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York, according to data from the FBI’s UCR database.
How did your area stack up on crime? Check out our interactive Crime Map to compare all Dallas City Council Districts. Curious how we got our numbers? Check out our methodology page here.
For more Dallas crime-related news, see how eastern Dallas auto thefts spiked under Paula Blackmon.