Council Member Cara Mendelsohn has earned the title of Crime Boss of the Month for logging the smallest year-over-year Crime Score decrease in November.
District 12, which Mendelsohn represents, only managed to clock an 8.6% dip in Crime Score last month, by far the smallest decrease in criminal activity among all 14 Dallas City Council districts.
Mendelsohn also represents the district with the fewest crimes recorded by the Dallas Police Department. But the crime rate remains consistently stubborn, and doesn’t see major swings in reduction like Gay Donnell Willis saw in District 13 (down 34%), and Zarin Gracey saw in District 3 (down 32%)
According to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard, it appears that a 32% increase in year-over-year motor vehicle theft reuined any shot for more dramatic overall crime reduction in the Far North Dallas district.
While motor vehicle theft is up in District 12, the Dallas Police Department reports that overall motor vehicle theft city-wide is down 30.5% year-over-year.
Property destruction and vandalism also ticked up slightly in Mendelsohn’s district over reporting from the previous year.
DPD has been struggling 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.
But that may soon change. On Election Day, voters approved Proposition S, one of the so-called HERO amendments to the city charter.
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 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.