Dallas police rescued nearly 100 children last year from human traffickers and made considerably more arrests of suspected traffickers than the year prior.
At a recent meeting of the Dallas City Council Public Safety Committee, the Dallas Police Department reported saving 99 children from the clutches of alleged human traffickers looking to exploit them for profit.
Thanks to partnerships with child protection agencies and local groups, such as the nonprofit New Friends New Life, the 99 victims have been given access to care and therapy to help overcome their traumatic experiences.
Compared to 2022, DPD logged an increase of 15.4% in reports of human trafficking in 2023, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard. Black and Hispanic people have been bearing the brunt of human trafficking in Dallas, particularly women and girls.
In operations with its partners in the North Texas Trafficking Task Force, not only in Dallas but also throughout the region, DPD revealed during its public safety presentation that it made a total of 190 arrests, with 116 stemming from adult human trafficking cases and 74 from juvenile ones.
These figures are similar to those logged by the Fort Worth Police Department, which reported a 21.1% hike in human trafficking cases between January and September 2023, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
While these statistics suggest that human trafficking has grown more prevalent in North Texas, so have the efforts to both prevent and combat it.
For instance, the City of Dallas will soon be launching a human trafficking dashboard to further enhance visibility on local human trafficking incidents and the work being done to stop them, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
There also have been multiple efforts to curb human trafficking on both national and state levels. For instance, January has been designated as Human Trafficking Prevention Month to promote awareness and advocate for measures to decrease the crime’s prevalence nationwide.
Yet there are significant hurdles to accomplishing this, explained Jennifer Reed, a data science analyst for the Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence who is helping develop the City’s new dashboard.
“Even when compared with other criminal activity, human trafficking can be difficult to detect as traffickers often condition the trafficked across time, using lies, threats, and intimidation to [get them to] lie to the police and other authorities regarding facts as simple as their own names and dates of birth,” Reed said.
To this end, DPD has been making considerable public outreach efforts to educate the community on identifying the victims of human trafficking to better give them the aid they desperately need. In 2023, officers held nearly a presentation each day — 257 in total — to approximately 13,500 community members, including teens.
Despite its considerable efforts, DPD still labors against a longstanding officer shortage. Only about 3,000 officers are fielded by the department, although a City report recommends that a municipality the size of Dallas should have closer to 4,000 to ensure public safety. Budgeting only $654 million for DPD this year, City officials will be spending much less than other high-crime jurisdictions, like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
The effects of this deficit are most apparent in Downtown Dallas, which steadily logs higher crime rates than Fort Worth’s downtown area. The latter is patrolled by a dedicated police unit and private security guards.
