Looking over preliminary crime statistics for November, it appears three high-crime districts and their respective city council members are vying to see what part of Dallas will be the most dangerous in which to own a car.
Districts 2, 6, and 14 each logged more than 100 Motor Vehicle Theft incidents last month, with reigning Crime Boss of the Month Jesse Moreno of District 2 ahead of the pack at 159, followed by District 6’s Omar Narváez at 126, and District 14’s Paul Ridley at 120, according to the City of Dallas Open Data dashboard.
Year to date, the same three districts also pull ahead, with a startling total of 1,705 auto theft reports in District 2, 1,531 in District 6, and 1,369 in District 14.
Alongside assaults, auto thefts are a key driver of the city’s crime rate, and there is no sign that local car thieves will slow down anytime soon.
The number of reported auto thefts in Dallas has been steadily increasing over the last couple of years. Police logged 10,734 incidents in 2020, 11,938 incidents in 2021, and as of Tuesday, December 6, there have been 12,455 incidents so far this year, with the bulk of December left to go.
Granbury resident Bob Locke was unaware of this alarming trend when he ventured into the city limits early last month. Someone stole his 2021 Chevrolet Silverado from a hotel parking lot near Southern Methodist University.
“It’s a gut punch,” said Locke, speaking with WFAA. “There’s a lot of worse things happening out there, but it’s a gut punch.”
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, pickup trucks are especially popular among car thieves, regularly filling out the agency’s monthly Top 10 Stolen Vehicles list.
“It seems like everybody knows somebody now that’s had a vehicle stolen recently in the Dallas area,” Locke said.
The Granbury man also lost his laptop, two child car seats, and some sentimental items, which were inside his truck when it was stolen. If those items had been stolen from the vehicle rather than with it, police would have logged a “Theft From Motor Vehicle” report, a crime category that is also on track to overtake last year’s numbers.
Districts 2 and 14 had the most reported thefts of items from inside vehicles in 2022 by far, clocking 2,131 and 2,305 incidents to date, respectively. District 6 trailed them with the third most, reporting 1,121 incidents.
The Dallas Express asked the Dallas Police Department on Wednesday how many recovered stolen vehicles were sitting in its impound lot but had not heard back by press time.
For guidance on how to keep your vehicle secure, even in Dallas, visit the North Texas Auto Theft Task Force website.
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.
The American people are not hurting enough yet. Higher prices in every category. Food , gas, housing. Every thing is up about 30%. Dollar tree is now dollar and twenty five tree. And most of their packaging is smaller. Crime is up in most if not all democratic run cities. When they hurt enough then they will demand change. The Republican party sucks at messaging. This should be a slam dunk for them but many of the republicans want to keep the peons under their thumb just like the democrats. The democrats are the problem but it’s doubtful republicans are the solution. The solution is long term. Get rid of the dept of education and teach our kids about patriotism and the genius of the constitution. Put all politicians in term limits. Lower their salaries and give them No benefits. Make being in government way less profitable.
Dallas has had high car theft for over 20 years. Hide Lock Take program started in the late 90’s to combat break-ins and theft. This is nothing new.
Car theft has never been as bad as it is now. Theft of cars and taking parts and selling on the black market is worse.
Why would anyone respect any of our laws when we’ve got a Federal Government encouraging people to break them before they’re even in the country?
This is very sophisticated theft now days, meaning it is organized criminal activity.
First you must enter the vehicle without activating alarms, then you must bypass all the anti-theft which comes with a new vehicle. Then you must find a way to HIDE that vehicle from being found. You can NOT hide 12,000 vehicles easily.
With traffic cams and other available devices, including vehicle trackers, the police have no excuse not to be able to follow these vehicles to a general location and then follow up with arrests.
Just as in every other city, theft is not considered a policeable action any longer by the authorities.They WAIT until someone is hospitalized or dies, then take action.
Placing bait cars only catches local kids and amateurs, police know this and pretend it does something that it never will.
Time to end the laziness of the police and make them actually create a priority for once. Hell, the insurance companies alone have enough clout to make the police do something, but they get to raise their rates instead. They are pretty much guaranteed a given profit margin so that more they lose the more their rates increase, the more they make!
Insurance companies could give special low rates to those clients who install additional trackers hidden in the vehicle. They could even provide the trackers at hugely reduced cost. Multiple Trackers smaller than a dime could even be epoxied to components, engines, etc for tracking.
The amount of cars being stolen across America means that alot of these cars are NOT worth the money they cost, it seems like the higher the price, the easier to still, the majority of these vehicles are NOT being stolen with the keys.
Everybody knows that all the trucks wind up in Mexico either whole or as parts.
tA friend of mine bought a new vehicle and at the time he was living in East Dallas, thieves jacked up his vehicle in his carport and stole his transmission, after repairs were completed, he was told the lived in a bad area of Dallas and should move, he did move to North Dallas and 2 weeks after he moved, his whole vehicle was stolen and was later discovered in the Trinity river bottom, completely stripped and then set on fire. I think it does not matter where you live in Dallas, if the thieves are not punished for their action when caught, then they continue to steal.
I live in a nice neighborhood, but I have lost thousands of dollars of items stolen from my truck from my locked tool boxes, it turns out the thieves can break into my tool boxes faster than I can open them with a key.I am for giving the police tools and laws to handle this problem and stop our liberal laws giving the criminals all the rights.
EVERY citizen in TX had the right to the same tools police use. The RIGHT TO CARRY. The MORE that carry the sooner all this ends.
With regard to POLICE, they are tits on a boar hog when it comes to theft. Low priority to them. If they looked at the TOTAL VALUE of over 5000 vehicles in three districts they would see that it is an estimated 100 to 200 million dollars. Meaning that the value of stopping the theft is equal to a huge portion of their wages. That means it should be a PRIORITY to end.
As I stated in my earlier post, there is no excuse for not being able to track and find the culprits, this is organized criminal enterprise on a mass production scale. Should be VERY easy to end of they even try.