Violent crime in Dallas is down over the past three years compared to a similar period between May 2018 and May 2021, according to a presentation by the Dallas Police Department and University of Texas at San Antonio criminologists Monday.
But despite the overall decrease in average monthly violent crimes, murders were up 7.2% compared to that same period. The city also saw a 2.9% increase in aggravated assaults.
Officials presented the data — which is up to date as of April — to the city council’s public safety committee as part of an update on DPD’s Violent Crime Reduction Plan the department began implementing in May 2021.
While the three-year total of murders and assaults is higher than pre-COVID levels, the annual numbers have decreased every year since 2021, said Michael Smith, a UTSA criminology professor who helped DPD compile the data.
Smith said those numbers look promising through the end of 2024.
“I just was looking at the year-to-date numbers with Chief Garcia — (the city is) on a really good trajectory with respect to murders and aggravated assaults so far this year,” Smith said.
Early data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed the national homicide rate rose a historic 30% between 2019 and 2020.
The city’s overall violent crime data mirrors recent crime trends across the country. According to the FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report released in June, violent crime dropped 15.2% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year among the law enforcement agencies who reported their data.
The Dallas crime reduction plan also identified certain violence-prone locations throughout the city and measured the impact of crime reduction efforts at those places.
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia estimated the crime reduction plan costs the department more than $8 million a year. There has never been a city budget item for the plan, he told the committee.
Asked what DPD’s plans are to keep crime down at problematic apartment complexes and other properties throughout the city, Garcia told the board it will take implementing all three parts of the crime reduction plan in tandem — investigating specific properties, policing certain high-crime grid areas and deterring those on probation or parole from reoffending.
"Those are the ways I believe that we'll be able to begin seeing grid areas in the city reduce, by impacting all three of those areas,” he said.
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