In a boxing gym at the corner of Audelia Road and Forest Lane – once one of Dallas’ most crime-ridden areas – Project Safe Neighborhoods has taken hold. Observers credit the national partnership for helping to reduce crime.
The project includes federal, state, and local law enforcement, along with prosecutors and social service organizations.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr was in Dallas Wednesday to promote the partnership. He says Dallas is getting an additional $700,000 in Project Safe Neighborhoods grant money.
“Efforts to rehabilitate neighborhoods, to provide opportunity, to protect children from getting drawn into bad associates wouldn't work unless we could also neutralize the crime,” Barr said. “We all have to work together and do it on a focused basis in neighborhoods.”
U.S. Senator John Cornyn cited university research showing Project Safe Neighborhoods has successfully reduced crime in neighborhoods across the country.
“These partnerships have been proven to reduce violent crime,” Cornyn said. “It also provides community outreach programs, like this boxing gym, where these kids are offered a safe after-school program with their peers.”
Dallas City Council member Adam McGough represents the Northeast Dallas neighborhood where he says crime has now dropped by double digits.
“We say it all the time - we cannot arrest ourselves out of these problems,” McGough said, “And we can’t just community-service our way out of it either. It has to be a combination and that’s what we’re seeing here. This prescription works.”
