Police in Dallas are still taking longer to respond to calls than the Dallas Police Department wants because the city does not have enough police officers.
When people call 911 in Dallas, the police decide how urgently to respond based on the type of issue. Serious emergencies get the highest priority, while less important incidents get a lower priority.
According to the city's data on how quickly police respond dashboard, the average time for the most urgent calls is 10 minutes as of April 19, which is 25% longer than the department aims for. There have been 10,952 of these urgent calls this year, and a common type is reporting a burglary in progress, with 1,105 such calls.
The average time for the next level of urgent calls is 74 minutes, much longer than the department's goal of 12 minutes. There have been 77,799 of these calls, which include major disturbances, business robberies, and street racing.
It takes much longer for police to respond to the less urgent P3 and P4 calls. They are taking 205 minutes for P3 calls and 230 minutes for P4 calls, while the department wants them to take 30 and 60 minutes respectively. There have been about 55,000 of these less urgent calls combined.
The Dallas Police Department has been struggling to meet its response time goals because they are short about 1,000 officers. A report from the city analysis says that a city the size of Dallas should have about 4,000 officers, but they only have about 3,000.
The lack of officers has led to more crime in Downtown Dallas compared to Fort Worth’s downtown, which has a special police unit and private security guards. clocks higher rates of criminal activity than Fort Worth’s downtown area, which is reportedly patrolled by a special neighborhood police unit that works alongside private security guards.
