The downtown area deployment sectors for the Dallas Police Department logged the most criminal activity in January.
DPD Sector 130 is made up of the Downtown Historic District and the Victory Park area. Sector 150 comprises Deep Ellum, Bryan Place, and part of the Cedars neighborhood just south of downtown. The two sectors fall within Dallas City Council Districts 2 and 14, which are represented by Council Members Jesse Moreno and Paul Ridley, respectively.
According to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard, Sector 150 logged 396 crimes, and Sector 130 saw 382. Between the two sectors, there were 148 car burglaries, marking a 31% increase year over year from the 113 clocked in January 2022. Auto thefts saw a similar increase of 33.7%, with 131 reports on the books last month.
Simple assaults also spiked year over year, jumping from 74 incidents last January to 96 for a 29.7% increase. Drug crimes also ticked up by 6.1%, with 104 crimes reported last month.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the Metroplex Civic & Business Association (MCBA) recently released its monthly comparative study on downtown crime in Dallas and Fort Worth. Once again, the former outpaced the latter by a significant margin when it came to assaults, drug crimes, and motor vehicle thefts. A dedicated police unit and private security officers patrol Fort Worth’s city center.
“Crimes go unreported because police response times are through the roof due to the police force being largely understaffed. The City of Dallas is continuing to lose police officers and now has barely 3,100 officers,” wrote MCBA CEO Louis Darrouzet in a news release.
Budgeting only $654 million for the department this year, the Dallas City Council chose to spend considerably less taxpayer money on law enforcement than other high-crime jurisdictions, like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
DPD currently only has around 3,000 officers patrolling the streets despite a City analysis recommending approximately 4,000.
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.