Persistently high crime in Downtown Dallas played a large part in District 2 Council Member Jesse Moreno placing third in this month’s edition of Crime Boss.
June’s Crime Boss is Council Member Zarin D. Gracey, whose District 3 saw a 19.6% Crime Score increase year over year due to a jump in violent crime in May. The Crime Boss runner-up was Council Member Chad West, whose District 1 logged a 0.77% Crime Score increase. Both council districts are located in the southwestern part of Dallas.
Earning the bronze this month, Moreno’s District 2 saw a 0.66% year-over-year bump in its Crime Score. The council district stretches across the center of the city, splitting Downtown Dallas with Council Member Paul Ridley’s District 14.
Logging a minimum of 900 crime reports every month this year, District 2 saw 165 motor vehicle thefts, 164 simple assaults, 121 car break-ins, and 118 drug violations in May 2024, according to data from the City’s crime analytics dashboard.
While the two vehicle-related crime categories trended downward compared to May 2023, simple assaults saw a 21.5% increase, and drug violations saw a staggering 71% spike year over year.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, District 2 is also home to a City-owned nuisance property at 711 South St. Paul St. The now-vacant Annette G. Strauss Family Gateway Center has been trashed by vagrants, with toilets clogged with human waste, glass panels and fixtures broken, and empty liquor bottles and other litter tossed on the floor.
Downtown Dallas has become a hotspot for homelessness, vagrancy, and crime, especially assault and motor vehicle theft, as extensively covered by The Dallas Express.
The Metroplex Civic & Business Association (MCBA) produces monthly comparisons of criminal activity in Downtown Dallas versus the downtown area of Fort Worth, which is patrolled by a specialized neighborhood police unit and private security guards. The studies regularly show considerably more crime occurring in the former, which MCBA CEO Louis Darrouzet attributes to the Dallas Police Department not having enough sworn officers.
“The City just continues to play games. They are not hiring enough police officers on purpose. They’re spending money on things that make it look like their budget is the same or increasing,” Darrouzet suggested in a previous interview with DX. “The biggest correction to crime is having a police presence. It’s not even putting people in jail, just having enough people on the street, making people less likely to commit crime, and the City’s not doing that.”
Despite a City report previously calling for a police force of around 4,000 officers, DPD currently fields roughly 3,000. City leaders have also allocated DPD a budget of $654 million this fiscal year, less taxpayer money than law enforcement agencies receive in other high-crime cities, such as Chicago and New York City.
The Dallas Express, The People’s Paper, believes that important information about the City, such as crime rates and trends, should be easily accessible. According to data from the FBI’s UCR database, Dallas has more crime per capita than hotspots like Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York.
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.