Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport saw a near doubling of motor vehicle thefts between 2022 and 2023, with only around 25% of vehicles logged as recovered.
Both airports and cities around the county saw surging rates of motor vehicle theft last year but varying recovery rates. DFW Airport went from just 51 vehicles reported stolen in 2017 to 229 in 2023.
Despite auto thieves’ recent targeting of the cars parked in its 40,000 parking spaces, DFW Airport has been “at the lower end of the rate of thefts” compared to other airports, as Chris McLaughlin, the airport’s executive vice president of operations, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
For comparison, Denver International Airport, which has around 51,000 parking spaces, had 689 stolen vehicles in 2023 — an increase of 74% from the year prior. It managed to slow auto thefts after significantly shoring up its security measures by increasing security guard patrols, putting up more security cameras, and installing new barriers, according to The Denver Post.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, DFW Airport — one of the busiest in the nation, with an estimated 35 million passengers passing through its gates annually — has several security measures in place. Video surveillance systems and a specialized police force keep watch over the 28-square-mile property.
Nonetheless, the Dallas Police Department saw a higher recovery rate than the airport, with an estimated 75% of victims eventually getting their vehicles back, as Police Chief Eddie Garcia reported last year, according to CBS News Texas.
Reports of motor vehicle theft skyrocketed to 18,849 in 2023 in Dallas, rising by 40.6% from the year before, per data from the City’s crime analytics dashboard.
Significant staffing issues within DPD have made handling this notoriously difficult-to-solve crime even harder. It fields only around 3,000 officers, even though a City report called for a force of roughly 4,000.
To speed up the reporting process, DPD rolled out a new procedure that deploys limited-duty officers to make initial contact with victims via video calls to get the vehicle’s plates into the national crime information system right away.
Nonetheless, some areas of Dallas have seen peaks in motor vehicle theft, including Downtown Dallas. Compared to Fort Worth’s city center, which is patrolled by a specialized neighborhood police unit and private security guards, Downtown Dallas saw 61 times more motor vehicle thefts last month, according to a comparative study by the Metroplex Civic & Business Association.
DPD was budgeted just $654 million this fiscal year, with City leaders opting to spend considerably less taxpayer money on public safety than their counterparts in other high-crime jurisdictions such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
