Council Member Carolyn King Arnold claimed the title of Crime Boss of December for logging the smallest year-over-year Crime Score decrease.
District 4, which Arnold represents, clocked an 11.79% dip in Crime Score last month — a respectable number — but still the smallest decrease in criminal activity among all 14 Dallas City Council districts.
While Arnold’s district saw improvement in almost every crime category, vandalism and motor vehicle thefts remained stubbornly high. Other districts saw a significantly higher reduction in crime. Kathy Stewart saw in District 10 (down 38.3%), and Jaynie Schultz saw in District 3 (down 31.2%)
The City reported an overall crime decrease of 24.7% in December, year over year.
DPD has struggled to keep crime under control as it remains significantly understaffed. Despite a prior City analysis calling for a force of around 4,000 officers, the department only has around 3,000 on the street, a situation that has negatively impacted response times.
Relatedly, the department’s budget of $654 million this fiscal year is smaller than that of law enforcement agencies in other high-crime cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
That, however, may be changing.
Voters approved two of the HERO amendments to the City charter. The amendments aim to boost police resources and hold city leadership accountable.
The approved Proposition U amends the charter to “require the City to spend no less than 50% of the annual revenue that exceeds the previous year’s annual revenue to fund the Dallas Police and Fire Pension and increasing starting salaries for Dallas police officers and require the City to have at least 4,000 officers.”
The Dallas Express, The People’s Paper, believes important information about the City, such as crime rates and trends, should be easily accessible. For example, 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 Dallas City Council Districts. Curious how we got our numbers? Check out our methodology page here.