Council Member Paula Blackmon has been named Crime Boss of the Month for the significant bump in Crime Score her city council district sustained in April.
It is the first time she has received the Crime Boss title in the history of The Dallas Express.
The council member represents District 9, a northeastern part of town that includes the Casa View and White Rock neighborhoods.
Based on the downloadable data set made available by the City, District 9 logged a year-over-year Crime Score increase of 15.16% for April, the biggest increase out of all of Dallas’ city council districts.
The increase was driven by spikes in several categories of property crime as well as an uptick in aggravated assaults, according to the City of Dallas Open Data crime analytics dashboard.
The most prolific criminal activity reported to the Dallas Police Department (DPD) last month was motor vehicle theft, which jumped by 117.7% compared to April 2022.
District 9 also endured a similarly astounding increase in shoplifting. Reported incidents spiked by 116.7%. Car burglaries also saw a bump, with the number of incidents logged increasing by 35.9% year over year. Aggravated assaults ticked up from 27 incidents in April 2022 to 30 in 2023.
Blackmon won re-election last weekend with roughly 80% of the vote. She beat out challenger Kendra Madison, who had said that her top priorities would be “crime prevention and homeless intervention,” according to a questionnaire she filled out for the news outlet Community Impact.
A request for comment was sent to Council Member Blackmon’s office, but no reply was received 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.