Dallas sees second year of violent crime reduction. How did they do it?
For the second consecutive year, the city of Dallas has seen a reduction in violent crime.
The city ended 2022 with violent crime down more than 5% from 2021 and more than 12% from 2020, statistics show.
In 2022, there were 11,087 violent crimes, down from 11,699 in 2021, according to the city’s crime analysis website. That includes 214 cases of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, down almost 4% from 222 the year before.
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia attributes the downward trend to support from city leaders, dedicated police officers and a violent crime reduction plan tailored specifically for Dallas and implemented in May 2021.
“None of it necessarily is unique,” Garcia said of the violent crime reduction plan. “It’s . . . the way we’re implementing it, meaning the order in which we’re implementing it and putting them all together.”
The first phase involves separating the city into approximately 101,000 grids and then devoting officers and resources to the roughly 50 grids responsible for a high percentage of the violent crime in the city.
“By lowering crime in those 50 grids, we were hoping to see reduction citywide, which is what we have seen,” Garcia said.
Garcia said they started with the grid work. He compared this phase to “fever” reduction so the following phases could be effective.
“When you’re sick and you go to the hospital . . . the first thing a doctor will say is ‘we got to lower the temperature,’” Garcia said. “And that’s what we had to do. We had to lower the temperature to the city in order for those other programs to really take hold.”
The second phase involves looking holistically at areas that experience high incidents of violent crime and seeing the police department as “a cog in the wheel,” according to Garcia, but not the entire solution.
“(We’re) looking at neighborhoods and asking if we need more impacts from code enforcement, if we need to hold landlords accountable,” Garcia said. “Does it need better streets? Does it need better lighting? Does it need better fencing? Do they need parks to play in? And trying to strengthen neighborhoods to hopefully get them stronger and out of that cycle of violence.”
Garcia said the third phase, focused deterrence, launches this year and seeks to impact individuals who have been or are likely to become involved in a life of violent crime.
“If you’re going to come to the city of Dallas and and hurt our community and cause trauma, . . . we’re very good at what we do and it’s not going to end well,” Garcia said. “But if you need help, if you need mental health, if you need housing, if you need job training, if you need job assistance, if you need what you need to get your life on the right track to be more positive, we want to have a robust set of programs in place so that . . . those individuals can take part in (them).”
Garcia described the third phase as a “community-centered” approach where the police department will refer people to resources that can help them. Garcia said the department is still deciding which community partners will be involved.
Finally, Garcia acknowledges that the crime reduction plan wouldn’t work if the officers didn’t believe in it.
“There’s no question everyone recognizes that we’re understaffed as a police department as a major city,” Garcia said. “And we’re working on growing as a department, but I think concentrating on those areas that (we’re) concentrating on and the science behind it, and basically, doing the best we can to put our hard-working men and women that are amazing police (in a position to) succeed, I think that’s key and that’s critical.”
