Looking at January’s crime statistics for this year, it appears that one city council district has trounced all others in terms of reported crimes in Dallas.
City Councilman Jesse Moreno’s District 2 clocked the most reported incidents last month, logging 1,110 offenses, beating out Councilman Omar Narvaez’s District 6 (957 offenses) and Councilman Paul Ridley’s District 14 (854), according to the City of Dallas Open Data crime analytics dashboard.
District 2, which is shaped somewhat like a cowboy boot resting its heel just south of Interstate 30, stretches out to the Children’s Medical Center in the northwest and includes many of the entertainment district neighborhoods (like Deep Ellum) before terminating just east of Samuell-Grand Park.
Disturbingly, the level of crime in District 2 for the month of January only ticked up about 1% overall when compared to last year’s count, meaning the area was nearly this dangerous in 2022 as well.
However, certain crimes still increased by more significant margins year-over-year.
Car burglaries, for instance, jumped by 18.5%.
Drug offenses spiked by an even wider margin, increasing by 65.6%.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, Moreno’s district made headlines for the 33% year-over-year increase in drug offenses in November 2022. January’s figures dwarfed that already alarming hike, further cementing the district’s reputation for drug use and trafficking.
January’s numbers do not tell the whole story, though.
A number of offenses were kept off the books because of a technicality that allows the City of Dallas to evade responsibility for crimes committed on a property where a licensed law enforcement agency other than the Dallas Police Department maintains primary jurisdiction, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
Since Moreno’s city council district happens to include Dallas’ medical district, where several hospitals maintain their own police forces, it stands to reason that any number of criminal offenses committed on hospital property would have pumped up the district’s reported crime figures even further.
The Dallas Express reached out to Councilman Moreno’s office for comment but did not receive a response 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.
For more Dallas crime-related news, see how Jesse Moreno was named crime boss for the third time.