Earlier this week, the flagship Neiman Marcus downtown was sporting a decidedly unfashionable pair of boarded-up windows after a recent incident of vandalism. So, too, was Uno Mas, a Tex-Mex restaurant near the Giant Eyeball.
Talk about eyesores.
According to Dallas police, someone threw rocks into the department store windows at about 8:40 a.m. on Saturday. A day earlier, an unknown person broke a window at Uno Mas before noon, while diners were inside, according to a restaurant manager.
No one has been arrested in either case, and police told us they are investigating.
Opinion
What’s going on?
A stretch of downtown along Main Street has had a spell of bad luck this summer. Employees at Wild Salsa and The Crafty Irishman told us that a vandal or vandals had broken windows at those establishments overnight, about a month ago. A small window at Wild Salsa was still boarded up this week. The Crafty Irishman already replaced its window.
It’s unclear whether these two acts of vandalism were reported to police and whether officers were able to identify suspects. A police spokesman asked us to file an open records request.
This is worth calling out here because the sight of boarded-up windows is a misleading signal of current conditions downtown. There has been significant and much welcome progress in improving downtown safety, cleanliness and livability in recent months. City officials, Downtown Dallas Inc. and other partners launched a two-pronged public safety campaign in May, focused on putting more police officers downtown and enforcing a ban on camping in public spaces and loitering.
Their efforts have paid off. Homeless people are no longer allowed to sleep on sidewalks or pitch tents in public plazas. Overall crime is down in the police beats in the city core, according to the Dallas Police Department’s data dashboard.
Larry Gordon, DDI’s chief of public safety and field operations, said there has been a 26% drop in crime year over year in the central business district. He also noted that quality-of-life complaints fielded by DDI for things like sleeping in the park or defecating in public are down 30% year over year.
Vandalism happens everywhere, not just downtown, but this recent spate of property destruction underscores why the city cannot let up in its efforts to clean up the city core. If Dallas wants downtown to be a destination, it has to make it safe for the people who work and live there and the businesses that serve them.
A broken window is more than a low-level crime stat on a dashboard. An act of vandalism in the light of day can rattle employees and patrons. Kevin Becerra, general manager of Uno Mas, told us it was going to cost the restaurant more than $1,000 to replace the window.
A store manager at Neiman Marcus declined an interview request.
Dallas must continue to establish and reinforce a culture of order downtown. Small problems radiate into bigger, more intractable ones. A broken window — or two, or three — can chip away at people’s sense of safety.