Criminal homicides shot up by 25% year over year in September, with two city council districts standing out from the rest in terms of body counts.
According to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard, Council Member Carolyn King Arnold’s District 4 and Council Member Adam Bazaldua’s District 7 accounted for nearly half of Dallas’ 25 murders last month. Each council district logged six murders. September also marked a more substantial month-to-month spike, a near-67% increase from the 15 murders in August.
Zooming out to survey the year so far, there have been 209 criminal homicides as of October 24 — a 13.6% jump from the 184 murders recorded in the same period in 2022.
While local officials have been touting a citywide drop in violent crimes like aggravated assault and robbery, murders have been ticking up. Additionally, when accounting for all categories of crime, there has been virtually no change in the number of reported offenses, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
A request for comment was sent by The Dallas Express to the offices of Council Members Arnold and Bazaldua, asking what city leaders are doing to bring the murder rate down, but no response was received by press time.
Struggling against the rise in murders is a critically understaffed Dallas Police Department. DPD maintains a force of fewer than 3,200 sworn personnel, roughly 800 less than the 4,000 recommended by a City analysis.
The effects of this shortage can be seen above all in Downtown Dallas, especially when crime rates are compared to the downtown area of Fort Worth, which is reportedly patrolled by a designated neighborhood police unit working alongside private security guards.
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.