Our Crime Boss series has been enormously popular with our readers. They love it. They talk to me all the time about it. I know it’s not very popular with our elected city council members as they try, unbelievably, to explain how they’re not responsible for the crime in their districts. Then what did we elect them for?!
I know it’s not popular with our city council members because they often communicate to our reporters that they will not provide comments to them for any article specifically because of our Crime Boss series.
While I would much rather have a friendlier relationship between our staff and those city leaders, what comes first is holding them to account. And if holding them to account means they won’t be friendly, then that’s OK.
The Dallas Express, while wanting to be friends with everyone in the community, was not created for that purpose. It was launched to make our city a better place, and that begins with holding our elected leaders to account.
We have brought to the fore in this publication the serious crime problem in Dallas. The one that our politician friends continue to try and hide.
What’s astonishing to me is the lack of reporting on which specific communities in our city bear the brunt of the crime problem. And when it comes to crime, there is no crime quite as bad as murder.
Despite all the talk about providing a helping hand to our all friends in the black community, we never hear about the fact that black people are overwhelmingly the victims of murders in our fair city. Tragically so.
Black people comprise approximately 24% of the city’s population, but are a whopping 64% of the murder victims! That gives rise to another crime … the crime of not bringing this embarrassing, horrible, and shameful statistic to the forefront.
I think by now our readers understand that we at The Dallas Express have no problem speaking truth to power, unlike the other publications in town.
We are not bought off by “advertisers” or “donations” to put forth a certain view. Other publications are littered with flattering articles about topics and people that pay them … and as a result, the truth is suppressed. Not here. Not ever.
So, every month, we are going to look at the ugly fact of all the murders in town, and how the murder victims are disproportionately our friends in the black community. Because that is an outrage and it needs to stop.
I ask the good people on the city council, the mayor, the police chief, and the district attorney’s office to pay attention and do something about this terrible problem.
Someone asked me the other day about what best could be done for the black community in our city. My answer was not sarcastic when I replied, “Stop having black people killed all the time for starters.” So, can we try that? Can we try not having so many people, especially black people, killed all the time?
The Dallas Express is hereby launching a new graphic as part of our monthly Crime Boss series. We do so both to spotlight the damage of the lawlessness plaguing our streets and to face the uncomfortable truth about who those victims are.
Our new City of Dallas Murder Victims graphic provides a year-to-date total as well as a demographic breakdown of the people who needlessly lost their lives within the city limits.
As of December 13, there have been 205 murder victims, the overwhelming number of whom were black or Latino.
Not counted in the graphic, however, are the 20 justifiable homicides that occurred in Dallas year-to-date, though this additional number of killings speaks to the danger residents face on their city streets.
In conjunction with our Crime Boss series, The Dallas Express hopes the Murder Victims graphic will bring a sense of urgency to city leaders who have for too long allowed violent crime to go unchecked at the cost of 205 lives this year.
Below are some questions and answers regarding the new graphic now to be featured on our homepage.
Where does your data come from?
The Dallas Express uses publicly available sources: the Dallas Open Data resource for Crime Boss reporting and the Crime Analytics Dashboard when reporting on specific incidents. These are both City of Dallas sources.
Why do you use two different data sets to determine your Crime Boss numbers and your Murder Victim numbers?
The Dallas Express uses the Dallas Open Data resource for Crime Boss reporting as it provides the most granular, accessible data by district and crime type. For our murder victim graphic, we use the Crime Analytics Dashboard as it is the authoritative resource on crime per the Dallas Police Department.
While the Dashboard is the more accurate and up-to-date City resource, it lacks granularity — not providing us with the district-level data needed for it to be used in Crime Boss.
For this reason, The Dallas Express relies exclusively on the Crime Analytics Dashboard when reporting on specific crimes and uses the Dallas Open Data resource to compute our monthly composite crime scores.
Why do you only count year-to-date (YTD) and not monthly murders on the Murder Graphic?
While the Crime Analytics Dashboard does update its total murder count as well as the related demographic information daily and provides a total murder count for each month, it does not provide a daily or monthly demographic breakdown, only a YTD.
How often will the murder graphic be updated?
The Dallas Express will update this graphic each month when a new Crime Boss is named.
The truth hurts. But the truth informs. The truth sets you free. Thank you for the truth we all need to hear….and own.
G R E A T REPORTING ..
We need the Dallas equivalent to http://www.heyjackass.com, which is the go-to resource for Chicago homicide statistics.
Love that site. Too bad Lightfoot doesn’t.
Texas has 4 cities with the highest crime rate. Former chief Brown of Dallas is the Police Commissioner of police in Chicago that’s why Lightfoot has closed her mouth. Austin, Dallas Houston and San Antonio has the highest crime rate.
Cleanup our own city before we talk about someone else’s.
Former Chief Brown is over the police department in Chicago now. I don’t think he let’s the Mayor in Chicago know who is over the police department. That is why crime is down. Someone need to inform the Mayor and Mr. Moreno who runs the police department.
Chief Garcia came from a small City. How do you overlook Assistant Police Chief’s who have worked their behind’s off and you have a Chief who doesn’t know the community. All of the communities not just a few. We know the cronies who decided who wanted Chief Gracia.
Citizens vote, are retain what you have. Complained about Chief Hall who okayed the Texas Rangers when she went on medical leave. Democrats were pissed because she said yes to Governor Abbott.
Chief Gracia ask for help or you will lose a lot of businesses and citizens downtown. Citizens do you want mayhem or safety.
The murder victims are overwhelmingly black, but so are the murderers.
Where are all the black police officer’s and the black teachers. Year after year, black areas complain. Please step up and instruct, protect, educate & support your own family’s. Always the poor me’s, then complain that you are categorized.
Karen, we don’t have enough of any colors of policemen in black communities, why don’t you ask the Mayor of Dallas. Teachers, teach they are not policemen and women.
Since you know so much about the black community, why don’t you come on down and help. We pay taxes but they don’t always use our taxes in minorities community. When will we see you!
i volunteer by ervay & mlk blvd in dallas. i’m white, and drive 30 miles from frisco to volunteer there. i NEVER see black folk volunteering there. we feed the homeless on saturdays. how come blacks don’t support any community (let alone their own communities)? they certainly have time to complain about being victimized. they certainly have money for hair/nails/air jordan’s.
What’s the majority race of the murderers or allegedmurderers?
The POC kids or young adults in this city are influenced by violence because that’s what they ingest daily. The music the games the lack of parental and community support. This has been festering for years. It starts in elementary school… If we don’t try to reach them while they are young and look to us for guidance then how can we be so baffled they have no morals or conscience?
It starts when the women choose to allow themselves to be impregnated by men who don’t want to be fathers. Check to see who many Asian and white murders and murdered there are then look at the family structures for them versus black and latino. The music and other n items are bad as well. But not the root cause.
Check the other communities and you see similar issues with the single parent (mostly women) households. But few will agree and just keep pushing midnight basketball and other foolishness.
Are you a Right to Life individuals. Remember we don’t abort children. Because black, Browns, White and Asian women are hunted like animals if they do.
White and Asian women have enough money to abort because they are given money or have money. So are saying that minority women should abort their babies? Mr. Galty I guess you sent money to Herschel Walker for his candidacy? You are an outstanding citizen.
Actually the abortion industry says minority women should abort their babies. That is why they almost always set up shop in those communities
If you going to make a big deal of the totals/% by RACE of the victims, then you should also include — in some manner — the totals/% by race of the murderers! Also maybe the totals/% by the police.
The police are generally doing the job they were called by some citizens to do.
Exactly. And it would tske police half a century or more to unlawfully kill 200 people in Dallas.
“Black people comprise approximately 24% of the city’s population, but are a whopping 64% of the murder victims!”
Question? What percentage of the 24% of the black population committed the murders?
Even further how many whites, latinos, asians and police officers committed murders. It would be a telling statistic.
What do you classify as “MURDER” ! If someone has broken into my home then their death is not murder. If a person is trying to attack another person with a weapon then it is not murder. compare the % of crimes committed by the black community.
The issue was about murder. Your comment is correct but does nothing to address the question.
Criminals are responsible for criminal behavior and not politicians. Just because a politician was elected to represent a district that is a den of reprobates doesn’t mean the reprehensible behavior by those people falls onto the shoulders of the politicians. If a certain demographic of people want to declare war on one another there’s very little the government can do to stop it. At best the only purpose government serves is administrating the allocation of public funds and the government is not omnipotent.
Excellent point. Too often political agendas drive criticism and no politician has a magic wand to eradicate criminal behavior. Unfortunately, crime in the black community has been a problem since forever. I think it is noble to highlight the victims of murder as a human being robbed of a chance to be all they could be. Murder not only affects the victim, but their families, their community and society as whole. I just hope the privacy of those affected can be respected, and the focus is not so much on the perpetrator that the victim is forgotten, or the few bad apples are not considered indicative of the whole bunch. Seems to me most of the victims are 17-24 year olds who know, or have some type of relationship with the perpetrators. Would be interesting to know the stats on that.
There should be the same reporting done with people who overdose.
Thanks for the detailed crime data. Can we include statistics related to those here illegally, sheer numbers, crimes committed, arrests made, sentencing or expulsion?
Partial statistics, and stats that are arranged to present data that is skewed for political reason is always problematic. However, if you are going to do this then DO IT PROPERLY.
Create a running chart going back say 84 months. Show it as a line chart by demographic for victims. Then, have a separate chart for perpetrators by demographic and keep the same color of lines for each demographic.
Another chart that would be helpful is a graphical map of murder locations, year by year (color of map pins is year?). This will give the scope of the problem geographically and show how the problem moves, if in fact it moves.
This will begin to tell the story. Until the Story is KNOWN, no one can address how to resolve the problem. Example, if most murders are “black on black”. then the problem MUST be addressed within the black community itself FIRST.
Should government be involved in that process? That depends upon the people and how they move to resolution. Government can only do so much, and what government loves to do is to end civil rights and abuse the innocent “for the good of all”. Better for the PEOPLE themselves to handle it if possible.
It would be informative to have a statistics on other types of crime including robberies reported (breakdown between cars, homes, and against individuals directly) with a further breakdown showing areas where the crimes are being perpetrated. The job you are doing is an important service for all citizens. We thank you.
The story behind the story is that most of these fatal crimes could have been prevented if there was a National Social Services Agency in each major city that was not controlled by the local gang structure. In LA County it is very difficult to get proper Social Services Benefits if you are not Armenian and/or accept the Army Meany Ian Genocide of LA County.
And without needed benefits to survive on the bottom__crime flourishes.
I don’t understand the new chart you include to show ethnic/ racial make up of crime victims. What is the Hispanic/ White category vs Non Hispanic White? Where are you reporting Hispanics who view themselves as brown or Indian but not White? Are they reported in the Hispanic / White group against their preference? This is a strange way of classifying the city’s Hispanic population.
I know this is a few months old, but I’ll try to answer it. Hispanic is not a race, but an ethnicity and culture. Non hispanic would typically denote someone of European ancestry, where hispanic/latino would include Mexico, South America and Caribbean. The hispanic white designation was created at the request of League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
Let confiscate their guns…all of them. Surely since criminals ignore the laws that makes murder illegal, surely they’ll respect gun laws and turn them in. Maybe say please?
doesn’t help when prosecuters let violent people out of jail with no bond due to equity