• CPAL in the news

Violent crime is down in Dallas, and here’s why

The Dallas Morning News - by Alan Cohen - February 2022

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Here is an excerpt:

A combination of policing and violence reduction strategies are at work.

After several years of rising violence in our streets, there is strong reason to believe Dallas is now on a safer path.

In fact, Dallas is bucking state and national trends. While homicides went down by 13% in Dallas in 2021 compared with 2020, we saw them rise in Austin by 86%, in San Antonio by 23%, and in Houston by 17%. That data is based on Preliminary Uniform Crime Reports compiled by each city police department for 2021, compared with final and published FBI Uniform Crime Reports for 2020.

Police Chief Eddie García and the men and women of the Dallas Police Department deserve significant credit for developing and executing the first phase of a violent crime reduction plan built on data and research.

It is also important to highlight and champion violence-reduction strategies in Dallas that go beyond traditional law enforcement. We are proud that Dallas has taken a layered, multifaceted approach to public safety that also emphasizes and invests in community-based solutions. And it is heartening to know that our decreases in violence have occurred at the same time we’ve seen meaningful decreases in arrests.

But now is not the time to declare that our mission is accomplished. It isn’t. When gun violence is present in a neighborhood, it becomes exponentially more difficult to create opportunities for people to thrive socially and economically. And violence still takes and forever alters more lives in our city than should be acceptable to any of us.

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