{"id":81619,"date":"2025-07-21T21:28:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T21:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/81619\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T21:28:36","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T21:28:36","slug":"deep-ellum-business-owners-call-on-dallas-for-help-battling-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/81619\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Ellum business owners call on Dallas for help battling crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep Ellum\u2019s business owners, residents and workers are giving Dallas 30 days to come up with solutions for ongoing enforcement issues,<\/a> which hit a new high over the July 4 weekend, when a spate of incidents, including a shooting, raised a call for a \u201creset.\u201d <\/p>\n

Residents have different ideas of what the reset could look like. <\/p>\n

Some, at first, had called a state of emergency, a tool in the city\u2019s disposal, to tackle criminal activity and institute a midnight curfew. <\/p>\n

Others, who find a state of emergency to be more appropriate for disaster relief and public health crises, said the action would permanently shutter businesses, and are calling for the city to hold bad operators accountable without the necessary permits, or who are over-serving alcohol to patrons. <\/p>\n

Political Points<\/p>\n

Get the latest politics news from North Texas and beyond.<\/p>\n

\"ConstructionConstruction takes place on Commerce Street in Deep Ellum July 21, 2025 in Dallas. (Azul Sordo \/ Staff Photographer)<\/p>\n

Mayor pro tem Jesse Moreno said a state of emergency was unlikely to be declared. He attended a meeting Monday at the St. Pete\u2019s Dancing Marlin bar, where more than 130 tenants and property owners arrived to voice their grievances. Moreno was scheduled to meet with city officials to come up with solutions that, he said, would center around community input. <\/p>\n

Neighborhood mainstays, such as Allen Falkner, who operates a bar in Deep Ellum, led the community meeting. <\/p>\n

Videos and testimonies from his own employees chronicling the chaos that unfolded over the holiday weekend were just one example of an ongoing problem, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cJuly 4 was a war zone down here,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were people running around throwing fireworks. They were throwing them at businesses. They were throwing them at cars. They were throwing them at the police, and they were throwing them at the patrons.\u201d <\/p>\n

Attendees pointed out a plethora of issues: They questioned why officers from the Dallas Police Department were not citing people who were openly carrying containers with alcohol in them, and the response times continued to lag. Others were concerned the city\u2019s code enforcement team was not holding bad operators accountable and that several crime incidents involved youths below the age of 21. <\/p>\n

Related:Dallas officials could rezone Deep Ellum to improve neighborhood\u2019s nightlife <\/a><\/p>\n

J. Damany Daniel, a business owner in Deep Ellum, wondered what the city\u2019s strategy was. The Deep Ellum Foundation, the non-profit overseeing developments in the entertainment district, doles out more than a $1 million on private security and contracting with other police officers to patrol the grounds. The neighborhood has a command station right off Commerce Street. Many businesses have active security cameras to monitor the premises. <\/p>\n

Business owners chose not to talk about the ongoing construction on Commerce Street, which has led to street closures and frustrated owners who feel that the never-ending construction is turning patrons away as they\u2019re unable to find parking or find themselves stuck in a traffic jam. <\/p>\n

Still, amid the voices of deep frustration was a feeling that private businesses were inevitably shouldering the responsibility of securing public spaces, such as sidewalks, when it\u2019s essentially the city\u2019s responsibility. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat would make sense if we were like Highland Park or West Village, which is private property in the middle of public space,\u201d Daniel said. \u201cI can understand having to invest that kind of money between cameras and private security and our portion of what we\u2019re covering for street closures \u2013 that can make sense, but we\u2019re talking about public streets.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Deep Ellum Foundation has been advocating for more enforcement tools. <\/p>\n

Last year, the City Plan Commission authorized a public hearing to install a \u201cmidnight-specific use permit.\u201d <\/p>\n

The proposed plan would have rezoned the 274-acre area and required restaurants and bars to get a specific-use permit to operate after midnight. The rezoning would also add noise regulations to match the needs of an entertainment district that\u2019s home to live music venues as well as residential buildings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The midnight specific-use permit was a key part of Deep Ellum\u2019s 2022 community safety plan. <\/p>\n

A memo from the city\u2019s planning department<\/a> said several establishments in the entertainment hub have certificates of occupancy typically reserved for restaurants that don\u2019t stay open late into the night. This means that two bars on the same street with the same clientele and music systems could look different on paper and have different security rules to follow.<\/p>\n

The public hearing has not been scheduled. <\/p>\n

In 2022, partners across city departments \u2014 such as the Dallas Police Department and Code Compliance \u2014 worked with Deep Ellum businesses, residents and Moreno, who oversees the district, to release a plan with recommendations <\/a>on enforcing parking rules, improving streets, tackling homelessness and adding security forces to monitor the district, among other things.<\/p>\n

Deep Ellum is also experiencing exponential growth as apartment buildings break ground. Another task force that focused on noise levels in the district<\/a> came up with a tier system to demarcate which noise levels are allowable in a predominantly residential pocket of the district and which preserve the district\u2019s nightlife.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lost sleep over the last couple of nights,\u201d Falkner said, adding that he does feel that there will be progress in the next 30 days. \u201cWe\u2019ve given them a timeline.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deep Ellum\u2019s business owners, residents and workers are giving Dallas 30 days to come up with solutions for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":81620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,24726,80,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-81619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-deep-ellum","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-tx","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114893350794513460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}