Dallas voters approved more money for police hires, and the city's 911 response times are already falling — proving what working Americans have said for years: fund the police, and the police can do their jobs.
The stakes are straightforward. When someone breaks into your house or pulls a knife, minutes matter. For years, Dallas police response times dragged far beyond department targets. Now they're moving in the right direction, and the reason is no mystery — the city finally put more officers on the street.
According to a June 8 city memo, Dallas police are now responding to priority 1 calls — shootings, stabbings, robberies in progress — in just under 9 minutes, down from over 11 minutes during the same period last year. That's within striking distance of the department's 8-minute goal. Priority 2 calls, which include suicides, 911 hang-ups, and major accidents, dropped from roughly 96 minutes to about 67. Response times for priority 3 and 4 calls were cut by more than half.
The Dallas Morning News covered the numbers but framed the story as a mild "bright spot" in a city where "so many things seem to be going wrong lately" — a telling admission from an editorial board that buried the real cause three paragraphs from the bottom: voters passed Proposition U in 2024, forcing the city to spend more of its budget on police hires.
The staffing numbers tell the story. At the end of fiscal year 2020 — the same year progressive cities across the country were defunding their departments — Dallas had 3,149 officers. Today, DPD has more than 3,370. That increase didn't happen by accident. It happened because Dallas voters overrode their own city government and mandated it at the ballot box.
A city memo also cites process improvements between patrol and communications, expanded online and phone reporting, and a roughly 5% decrease in calls requiring officer dispatch (182,000 this year versus 192,000 last year). The Morning News credits Chief Daniel Comeaux and his officers for the improvement, which is fair — but the structural enabler was Proposition U.
The department still hasn't hit its targets. Priority 2 calls are averaging 67 minutes against a 12-minute goal. Priority 3 sits at 115 minutes versus a 30-minute target. Priority 4 calls are still averaging over two hours. The job isn't done.
But the trajectory is clear: more cops, faster response. While cities that slashed police budgets are still grappling with surging crime and hemorrhaging officers, Dallas chose a different path — and the numbers are starting to reflect it. The question now is whether the city will keep its foot on the gas, or let bureaucratic inertia creep back in.
