The Dallas Morning News has published a comprehensive interactive online map of Dallas’ 27 crime hotspots. The map illustrates substandard apartments, payday loan/fast cash shops, Dallas Housing Authority projects and apartments built before 1985 in relation to crime. It also shows 2010 U.S. Census data regarding ethnicity and income of the residents in these areas.
In the whole city, according to the data, you are most likely to be the victim of a crime in East Dallas’ Ross Ave.-Bennett Ave. area, where there are hundreds of old, low-rent and/or substandard apartment complexes and about seven payday lenders, according to the data.
Most of East Dallas looks relatively good. The other top-10 hotspot near our neighborhood is Five Points, or Vickery Meadow, at number four. The area is just north of Northwest Highway, east of Central.
Actually, this is encouraging. Vickery Meadow, in years past, has topped the list of Dallas Police Departments’ crime pockets. Its dramatic drop probably is in direct relation to the efforts of the Vickery Meadow Improvement District — in March 2011 we wrote a piece about the myriad efforts to improve the quality of lives (and there are about 36,000 of them in the three-square miles of apartments) in the area. This should be encouraging. I mean, sure they are still number four, but this shows that what they are doing is working, if gradually.
Over the past decade, crime in East Dallas has dropped something like 40 percent (violent crime 70 percent) thanks in large part to strong crime watch groups and coalitions such as Ferguson Road Initiative.
