The Dallas Police Department wants to drill down into two Dallas addresses where they believe criminal networks are the cause of high incidence of violence.
An apartment complex at 3515 Overton Road and a retail strip at 11700 Ferguson Road are the department’s suggestions for its new Place Network Investigations Team.
The strategy “to identify and disrupt networks of criminogenic places that disproportionately contribute to violent crime in Dallas” is part of DPD’s recently adopted Violent Crime Reduction Plan.
Now that the two addresses have been identified, the department will be looking to create groups — called PNI boards — composed of community stakeholders and specially trained officers to “design unique place-based strategies to address crime and its causes within the crime-place network.”
That could be traditional police work, such as sting operations or making more arrests, as well as strategies around code enforcement, design changes, or litter and graffiti cleanups. All the while, crime data will be tracked closely.
A study from the University of Texas at San Antonio, released this summer, shows that the department is making some progress in its crime-reduction plan, which also includes increased policing of statistical crime hotspots.
Other strategies in the plan include violence interrupters, “a community based strategy that helps to resolve conflicts, spread the retail deterrence message, and serve as street-level conduits to social services,” as well as urban blight removal, aka the “broken windows” theory.
Recent statistics show that overall violent crime is on the downswing.
Police statistics show that apartment complexes are the most common place for violent crimes to happen in Dallas. Since May 7, there have been 58 murders, 559 robberies and 2,275 aggravated assaults at apartment complexes in Dallas.