Dallas is seeing a significant uptick in drug-related criminal activity this year, logging year-over-year spikes in police service calls.
According to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard, there have been 6,379 drug-related offenses reported in the city as of August 13. The running count marks a 7.6% increase over the 5,930 reported during the same period last year.
Furthermore, the Dallas Police Department received 1,134 calls for service regarding open-air drug sales. There were only 996 by this time in 2022. Reports of drug houses also jumped from 565 to 595, according to the City’s police response time dashboard.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, City staff have yet to restore the dashboard’s geographic filters for crimes reported after May 3, leaving Dallas residents largely in the dark with regard to where crime has been happening the last few months. The City has blamed the issue on a ransomware attack hitting City computer systems in May.
DPD has been severely understaffed in recent years, maintaining only a force of around 3,100 police officers. A City analysis advises that Dallas needs about three officers for every 1,000 residents, putting ideal staffing levels at roughly 4,000.
The shortage has dramatically impacted police response times, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
So far this year, Dallas police are taking, on average, 537 minutes — nearly nine hours — to respond to a call about open-air drug dealing. The average response time for all of 2022 was 320 minutes. For calls about drug houses, DPD is currently averaging 824 minutes, or more than 13 hours. Last year, police arrived at the scene in an average of 516 minutes.
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 prior to the ransomware hurdles can check out our methodology page here.