Drug offenses ticked up last year, with a lot of such criminal activity concentrated in just a handful of Dallas City Council districts.
According to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard, there were 10,251 drug crimes documented by the Dallas Police Department in 2023, marking a 4.5% bump up from the 9,806 offenses logged the previous year.
Four of the city’s 14 council districts had more than 1,000 drug crimes reported.
District 6, located in northwestern Dallas and represented by Council Member Omar Narvaez, saw the most offenses committed, with 1,691, a 5.1% increase over the 1,609 recorded in 2022.
Council Member Jesse Moreno’s District 2 logged the second-most offenses last year at 1,454, with an even bigger year-over-year increase of 19.9%. Some 1,213 drug-related crimes occurred in the district the previous year. Roughly half of Downtown Dallas, which regularly logs significantly more drug offenses than Fort Worth’s city center, is located in District 2.
District 4 in southern Dallas, represented by Council Member Carolyn King Arnold, clocked 1,119 drug crimes in 2023 for a 13.8% spike against the 983 offenses documented the year before.
Finally, Council Member Adam Bazaldua’s District 7 cracked 1,000 drug crimes by 24 offenses. Such offenses actually dipped down by 2.6% compared to the previous year. District 7 is situated just southeast of Downtown Dallas.
While DPD has been working hard to get crime under control, it has struggled due to a longstanding officer shortage. A prior City analysis recommended a force of roughly 4,000 to adequately meet the needs of a city the size of Dallas, yet DPD fields only around 3,000. Budgeting only $654 million for DPD this year, City officials are poised to spend much less than other high-crime jurisdictions, like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
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.