It almost looked like good news for the City of Dallas, with all 14 districts in the region seemingly experiencing a decrease in crime in July of 2022. Districts 3,6,8, 9, and 14 each looked to have had over a 60% decrease, according to the data. But then it became apparent that the City of Dallas failed to specify a district for 6,257 different crime reports, resulting in the city-wide Crime Score being understated by 54.6%.
Councilman Chad West, who represents District 1, would have been named The Dallas Express Crime Boss of the Month for August based on the fact that the area saw the smallest decrease in crime, at 30.1%.
However, in light of the crime data that was not attributed to any district, The Dallas Express was forced to proportionally adjust each district’s Crime Score to account for the unattributed crime.
With that adjustment made, the new percent change in Crime Score between July 2021 and July 2022 for District 1 was an increase of 53.83%, earning West the dubious title for the greatest increase in crime rather than the smallest decrease.
The “Crime Boss of the Month” (CBOM) title is given to the Dallas City Council member whose district has experienced the greatest percentage increase (or most minor decrease) in crime every month.
Each district’s Crime Score is calculated by multiplying the raw number of crimes from each category by a proprietary weighting, totaling all of the weighted category scores, then dividing the total by the population (in thousands) in that area.
District and city-wide population figures are from the Dallas City Hall 2020 estimates.
The monthly rankings are determined by the year-over-year change in the monthly Crime Score. The year-over-year change is calculated by dividing the most recent month’s Crime Score by the Crime Score from the same month in the prior year.
The awarding of the Crime Boss title for August marks the fourth time West has received the CBOM crown this year and the third time in the last four months.
West is the first City of Dallas councilperson to be named CBOM more than twice. (Carolyn King Arnold, D4, and Jaynie Schultz, D11, have each been crowned CBOM on two different occasions.)
The Dallas Express reached out to West’s office to discuss crime in his district. However, the only response received was the question, “Where are you getting your data?” (The answer is City of Dallas Open Data.)
Since providing that answer, The Dallas Express has not heard back from the councilman.
While it would appear that some problem areas in D1 saw lesser reports, the data is skewed by the lack of locale for over 6,200 crimes.
Based on the available data, there were no homicides in D1 in July ’22, for instance, after seeing another murder in that region last month, and the only increase when comparing Julys was in Trespass of Real Property, which increased by one instance, up from five to six this year.
The largest so-called decrease in D1 was in the area of Motor Vehicle Theft, which supposedly sank from 108 in July ’21 to 81 in July ’22.
Yet there is no way to truly tell how July ’22 looked in comparison to July ’21, because for July ’22, the City of Dallas failed to disclose the associated district for 6,257 reported crimes throughout the city.
In the absence of transparency from the City of Dallas, each district’s Crime Score data for July 2022 has been adjusted ratably to account for these underreported crimes.
While we believe this to be the fairest approach, it is admittedly not perfect.
Unfortunately, because the City of Dallas has obscured the data on such an enormous number of July crimes, it’s possible that Chad West is bearing responsibility for crimes in some of his fellow council members’ districts.
However, with a year-over-year increase of nearly 54% using this methodology and a recent streak of Crime Boss designations to his name, it’s safe to say that Chad West’s District 1 has become anything but safe.
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.
