With the end of June rapidly approaching, no signs have yet appeared as to when City Manager T.C. Broadnax will manage to resolve an alleged ransomware attack that began in early May.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the City announced in a May 3 press release that a number of its servers had been compromised in a ransomware attack. The alleged attack was later linked to ransomware group Royal, which also took credit for an attack last year on the Dallas Central Appraisal District, as The Dallas Express reported.
The City of Dallas website, the Dallas Police Department website, and other vital online functions of the municipal government were wiped out of operation. It was not until May 9 that the DPD website went live again, as The Dallas Express reported at the time.
While many day-to-day City functions have since been restored, Broadnax and his team are still lagging on at least one vital front: crime reporting.
Although restoration updates on May 12 and 15 assured residents that “Public safety remains [the City’s highest priority” and that “restoration continues with a primary focus on public safety,” the people of Dallas remain in the dark about crime in the City more than a month later.
As of Monday evening, June 19, DPD’s violent crime dashboard informs visitors that it has not been updated since May 3, the date of the alleged ransomware attack. While the City’s open data crime analytics dashboard contains some figures for May and June, DPD spokesperson Kristin Lowman confirmed to The Dallas Express last week that the problems had not yet been resolved and these figures could not be taken as reliable.
The Dallas Express’ Crime Boss series, which reports on the highest crime increases seen across Dallas in a given month, continues to be hindered by the lack of reliable data available to the public.
Whether the system failure will be resolved in time for July’s installment remains to be seen.
While trends over the last two months cannot be determined with any degree of confidence, the first quarter of 2023 presented an alarming picture, with a 33.85% year-over-year spike in non-family murders, according to DPD’s May 1 briefing.
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.