Certain features of the City of Dallas’ Open Data crime analytics dashboard are still not functioning after nearly three months of data issues purportedly caused by a ransomware attack against City servers.
Up until early May, the dashboard empowered Dallas residents and other members of the public to get an accurate picture of the public safety situation in the city. Users could break down reported crimes by City Council district, ZIP code, Dallas police division, and patrol beat, allowing the public to see where criminal incidents were happening.
While it seems crimes are still being tallied, the City’s dashboard no longer allows users to filter by geography.
The City’s nagging tech issues coincide with a crippling police shortage at the Dallas Police Department. Approximately 3,100 police officers are currently deployed, roughly 900 short of the 4,000 advised by a City analysis that recommends about three officers for every 1,000 residents.
Crime has been high in the city in recent years, especially in Downtown Dallas, which typically sees considerably more crime reported than Fort Worth’s downtown area. Dallas’ neighbor enjoys the reported benefits of a dedicated neighborhood police unit and private security guards.
The Dallas Express reached out to the City and asked if staff had an idea of when full functionality would be restored to the dashboard. The City was also asked whether its employees were logging the council districts in which crimes were being committed and if there were any particular technical challenges preventing full functionality from being restored.
A spokesperson for the City responded in an email:
“As previously shared July 10, while the City has achieved 97 percent restoration since the May ransomware incident, staff continues working diligently to restore the City’s Open Data Portal to full operation, including the Active Calls dataset. While this will take time to complete, restoration remains a top priority and we will continue to share updates as they are available. Police data and crime statistics are available on DPD’s website on the Crime Analytics Dashboard,” wrote Catherine Cuellar, the City’s director of communications, outreach, and marketing.
Despite having a $4.51 billion operating budget, the City of Dallas has yet to make additional progress in the last two weeks.
A follow-up email sent by The Dallas Express inquiring about the veracity of the existing figures on the dashboard went unanswered 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.
Curious to know how your area stacked up on crime? Normally, you could check out our interactive Crime Map to compare all Dallas City Council Districts, but as reliable data remain unavailable, this feature remains blank. Those interested in how we got our numbers previous to the ransomware hurdles can check out our methodology page here.
