Around 35 more Dallas police officers could be deployed downtown this summer in an effort to improve public safety in the heart of the city.
The enforcement boost would raise downtown police staffing to 130 officers — its highest level in a decade, officials said. That doesn’t include private security, public transportation officers, code enforcement and other city forces in the Central Business District, which covers the loop created by the Woodall Rogers Freeway, Interstates 35E and 30, U.S. 75 and I-345.
The Dallas Police Department pledged to house the officers in a new command center downtown. The city also wants to add up to 10 surveillance cameras and better coordinate with those already in place at private businesses and residences.
“You will feel the change in the way that we want to engage our different partners downtown,” Dominique Artis, Dallas’ chief of public safety, told The Dallas Morning News. “The mere fact that we want to make sure that we’re visible, that we have a place that, collectively, all of these different entities can talk about what we’re seeing downtown and then adjust our plans as need be.”
The effort is based on the premise that improving public safety downtown will lead to future citywide revitalization. The Dallas Police Department is working with the nonprofit Downtown Dallas Inc. in a public-private partnership with downtown stakeholders to drill down on issues that the neighborhood’s leaders believe hurt the area’s quality of life, including crime, public disorder and homelessness.
Artis pointed to crime data to the deployment of more officers downtown. An analysis of police data from the sector that encomes downtown showed a 3% drop in violence from 2020 to 2024. Overall crime climbed about 34.2% — for a total of 4,168 offenses in 2024, led by motor vehicle thefts, simple assaults and vandalism.
How the plan will be carried out is a complicated question.
The Dallas Police Department has been in a yearslong staffing crisis exacerbated by competition with other cities and high attrition rates. That means any reallocation of staff could take resources from other divisions or units. It’s a consideration Dallas’ former police brass have said they had to contend with in determining where to place officers.
The downtown investment raises questions about whether that allocation of officers could take current or potential patrol staff away from neighborhoods grappling with higher levels of violence. At a time in which residents and elected city leaders have voiced hopes for faster police response times, requests for more police citywide have become more urgent.
“We all know that southern Dallas deserves the same urgency and investment as every other part of the city,” said council member Jaime Resendez, whose district includes most of Pleasant Grove. “Public safety must be rooted in equity, and I’ll keep pushing for a balanced, data-driven approach that treats every neighborhood fairly.”
Daniel Comeaux, who became Dallas’ police chief in April, said resources won’t be taken from other divisions for downtown. He said he’ll allocate new cadets there and referenced a recent graduating class. The department’s ramped-up hiring efforts have led to larger academy classes, with one in March made up of 41 officers — DPD’s largest graduate group since 2022.
Those ranks still need to go through months of “field training” — where they’re paired with veteran officers on the streets. That could happen downtown, but any influx of new officers to a division calls for more trainers there to accommodate them.
Another form of staffing could come from hiring retired officers in a part-time capacity.
Comeaux has told The News he believes there are officers with “gas left in a tank” that can provide for the city. He hopes to have them in place by the end of summer, but more details are expected to be ironed out in the coming months.
Council member Carolyn King Arnold, whose district is in southern Dallas, said it’s important for downtown — as the city’s core and a key attraction — to feel safe, but she wants a review of officer staffing and an assessment of where crime data shows police should be working.
People feel safer if they see police, she said, adding residents want to feel confident that if they call 911, an officer will respond.
“If you feel like downtown is getting all this attention, then that’s gonna frustrate the ... day-to-day citizens who are saying, ‘I just wanna see an officer,’” Arnold said. “We don’t wanna keep hearing the stories about, ‘We had to wait,’ especially when it was a very serious incident.”
Officer staffing crises spur “a little skip in the heartbeat,” Arnold said, because residents wonder: “Will they come to my community?’”
“If they don’t come,” she said, “it’s much easier for a community that’s already kind of under-resourced to say, ‘But they don’t care anyway, so I wouldn’t expect them to come.’”
One idea, she said, is for the city to look at other forms of security instead of sworn officers.
Dallas police spokesperson Lt. Tramese Jones said the 130 officers are an “approximation” and the situation will continue to be evaluated. After new officers go through field training, she said, “some officers will be assigned to CBD based on anticipated needs and historical data.”
The new staffing will primarily be patrol, Jones said, and the department will collaborate with private security and other Dallas agencies. She said the city has 90 cameras in the Central Business District and has the potential to add 7 to 10.
“Officers will be more proactive in minor offenses but still focus on high priority calls and violent crime as well,” Jones said. She said the increased staffing will allow police to enforce quality-of-life issues.
Even before Comeaux arrived, the police department had been increasing its ranks downtown and created specialized daytime and evening task forces. Questions about safety had surfaced following a day in September in which three people were injured in a Commerce Street shooting and a woman was hit with an object in an apparent random attack at Field and Elm streets.
At the time, the Central Business District had 94 officers, which a police spokesperson said meant there were “more officers per beat in CBD than in any other beat or sector in the city.”
The new command center is expected to be paid for by private funding and the city will take over later, according to Downtown Dallas Inc. officials, who added that other security officers and city employees — including a RIGHT care team, made up of an officer, paramedic and social worker to respond to mental health calls — will also use that central location.
Jennifer Scripps, DDI’s president, said a dedicated team downtown — where she said officers might be five minutes away from an incident instead of 25 — starts to “really make a difference in community policing.” In the absence of a police presence, she said, crimes can escalate.
“ We know that our policing levels were below the optimum level,” Scripps said. “ We really believe the increased presence — and it’s gonna continue to increase — is making a difference.”
Staff Writer Devyani Chhetri contributed to this report.