Has Dallas outsmarted the violent crime wave? Houston should find out.
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A year ago, Eddie Garcia was still going through the vetting process to be the next Dallas police chief when he phoned a San Antonio professor he’d gotten to know during his four years as chief of the San Jose Police Department in California.
If Garcia got the Dallas gig, he knew violent crime reduction would have to be his primary focus, coming off a year in 2020 where homicides spiked in Dallas by 23 percent. He wanted to come in armed with new ideas and asked Michael Smith, professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio who had done previous research for the San Jose PD, to help draw up a plan.
“My goal, when we put that together was for it to bring together the best of what we know, from a research and evidence standpoint, about how the police can best control crime in urban areas,” Smith told the editorial board this week.
Garcia got the job, and the result of their collaboration was implemented in May: first, to use data to map out roughly 50 micro locations — “hot spots” in police parlance — in Dallas that produced the highest volume of violent street crime. Second, to flood the dangerous areas with a consistent police presence. And third, rather than employ dragnet or stop-and-frisk tactics, to focus on the surveillance, deterrence and arrest of repeat violent offenders, ferreting out guns and drug activity in particular.
The results so far are impressive.. Violent crime in Dallas dropped 9 percent in 2021, and 12 percent since Garcia implemented his plan, the Dallas Morning News reported. Homicides decreased by 13 percent, while gun and drug seizures increased by 27 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Even more eye-popping: arrests fell 5 percent, suggesting that the precision policing tactics are working without stuffing a bunch of people in jail cells.
At a time when most major U.S. cities have seen sharp increases in violent crime, Dallas is trending in the opposite direction, offering a potential blueprint for cities such as Houston — where the homicide rate increased by 17 percent in 2021.
While Harris County has a larger population than Dallas County, their criminal justice systems have some things in common: each have district attorneys who have declined to prosecute low-level marijuana offenses; bail systems that were deemed unconstitutional and forced by courtsto reform; and a wave of progressive-minded judges elected in 2018. Where the two counties diverge is Harris’ massive backlog of criminal cases clogging its courts — residue from the double whammy of Hurricane Harvey flooding the courthouse and the COVID-19 pandemic — that is preventing cases from going to trial and allowing many accused of violent crimes to roam the streets while they await long-delayed court dates.
Garcia’s hyper-targeted approach to crime reduction in Dallas can certainly be replicated in Houston and Harris County, but it will need to be carefully tailored to our city’s sprawling geography. The Houston Police Department has employed “hot spots” strategies in the past with mixed success. A 2011 study by criminologists at Sam Houston State University found that dispatching officers in the department’s Crime Reduction Unit to specific high-crime neighborhoods did not reduce violent crime but did tamp down property crime. Such a strategy requires a sustained commitment and getting buy-in from officers, who might find patrolling the same neighborhoods on a regular basis to be monotonous, is critical.
Still, Dallas’ micro zone strategy has caught the eye of Chief Troy Finner, Garcia’s counterpart in Houston. Finner, who was sworn in as police chief in April, told the editorial board this week that he hopes to pick Garcia’s brain on some of the tactics and data he’s using.
“We all as chiefs try to learn from — especially major city chiefs, when it comes to communication — shared success and failures,” Finner said. “So a part of that strategy is looking at what is working in other cities, and could you duplicate that in your city?”
In Harris County, the sheriff’s office is already moving forward with a similar micro-zones policing initiative in unincorporated areas — such as Cypress Station, Woodforest and Aldine — where violent crime is high. County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced the $2.6 million plan last month, which will run for 120 days. It incorporates one of the long-term pillars of Garcia’s strategy in Dallas: a community policing unit that will hold regular meetings with local residents to keep them informed on progress and gather information that can help home in on entrenched criminal activity.
“It’s about understanding what factors and variables are contributing to a long-term crime problem,” said Maj. Thomas Diaz, who leads the sheriff’s Crime Analysis Intelligence Division team.
There is no silver bullet that will solve our violent crime wave. It is a complex, interconnected problem that has as much to do with what’s happening in our courtrooms as it does on our streets. Dallas offers some hope that targeted policing in partnership with city agencies, nonprofits and neighborhood leaders can both deter crime and act as a conduit to social services that ensure sustainable progress. If it working for them, it can work for us, too.
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