2022-01-01 to 2025-12-31 · 83,911 victims · Martin Ngoh
Black women's reported assault rate in Dallas is 2.1 to 2.3 times Hispanic women's and 3.6 to 4 times White women's, and age does not explain it. The gap is widest for aggravated assault. Where locations are known, in the city's own records of non-family assaults, comparing women in similar neighborhoods narrows it from 2.7 to 2.2 times.
Per 100,000 residents a year, the reported assault rate for Black women is 3,798: 2.3 times Hispanic women's, 3.9 times White women's, 13.5 times Asian women's.
Women only (24,838 Black women, 25,223 other women). Each cut asks whether a plain explanation accounts for the gap.
Police data holds only what was reported. If Black women report more or less often than other women, every rate here moves, and this data cannot say which way.
Dallas police publish incident data on Dallas OpenData with victim race and locations, but without family violence or any offense with a victim or suspect under 17. For 2022 to 2025 it holds 8,411 assaults on women in the compared groups, against 50,061 in the FBI's NIBRS files. The rates above use NIBRS. The city file is used for the replication and for the location section below.
NIBRS has no location, so this section uses the city's public file: assaults with no family or partner relationship and no one under 17, 4,254 on Black women and 4,157 on other women in the compared groups, 2022 to 2025. Victim ages are linked from the city's Police Person table (98.2% in simple assaults and 95.3% in aggravated assaults). It describes that part of the data, not all assaults.
In non-family assaults, Black women's rate is 2.59x Hispanic, 3.31x White and 10.87x Asian women's. The gap holds inside every police division. Comparing women in tracts with similar poverty, income, jobs and housing narrows it to 2.18x. Those conditions are shaped by segregation, so this locates part of the gap in where women live; it does not explain it away.
Partner and other family assaults have no public location, and they are 63% of the assaults on women in NIBRS. Whether neighborhood accounts for the same share of those is unknown.
Dallas police publish their incidents with family violence, and offenses where a victim or suspect is under 17, removed. NIBRS 2022 to 2025 is filtered the same way here (women 17 or older, no partner or family relationship to any offender, no offender under 17) and set against the city file over the same years. Same women, same race rule (Hispanic of any race first), same population. The city file still holds 47% fewer women than NIBRS filtered this way, so it leaves out more than these rules do, but the shortfall is close to even across groups. 2,406 more women in the city file are in assaults still classed as preliminary investigations, outside codes 13A and 13B; counting them moves the city file's ratios to 2.88x Hispanic, 3.4x White, 12.25x Asian. A woman listed under both 13A and 13B in one city-file incident is counted once in the total, as aggravated (13 in this period).
The data says the reported assault rate for Black women is higher. It does not say why. Nothing here measures causes, offenders or circumstances.
Every number is a report that reached the police. Willingness to report, and recording practice, differ by group, area and time.
Rates count reports. Someone assaulted twice counts twice, so a rate is not the share of people assaulted.
Rates divide by where people live, not where they spend time.
Race is recorded by officers; the population counts people who are Black alone. There are 7% more people who are Black alone or in combination. If multiracial victims are recorded as Black, the worst case is 2.11x Hispanic, 3.64x White, 12.6x Asian instead of 2.26x, 3.91x, 13.52x.
1.3% of Black residents are also Hispanic, so they sit in both denominators.
261 victims are left out of the rates: their sex is unknown, or their race is unknown or outside the compared groups. Race is unknown or outside the groups for 0.2% of women and 0.4% of men.
Police reports, not how often women are hurt. In the national victimization survey, which counts assaults whether or not police learned of them, Black and White women describe being assaulted at about the same rate nationally and about 1.5 to 2 times in large cities. A follow-up (Police-Records-vs-Survey-Assault-Victims-by-Race-and-Sex-2015-2025, on GitHub) tested why police records differ more: not reporting rates, not (or only a little) how police write up a call, not the same women counted repeatedly, but largely where assaults happen and who calls. Hospital emergency departments, which do not depend on a call to police, see a gap like the police one (about 4.6 times for women in 2021 to 2022), which points to the survey undercounting assaults on Black women.
The FBI's NIBRS files record no address or police division, so the location test and the tract model run on the city's own public file instead (the Where section). That file holds only non-family assaults on victims 17 and older, so those results describe that part of the data, not all assaults.
Dallas police publish their incident data without family violence or any offense with a victim or suspect under 17. The age rule is in the dataset's description. The family violence rule is not, but the file's family-violence flag is not set on any record. For 2022 to 2025 the public file holds 17.1% of the assaults on Black women that Dallas police reported to the FBI, against 15.0% for Hispanic, 20.2% for White and 21.2% for Asian women. This analysis uses the FBI's NIBRS files, which hold them all.
Only the Dallas Police Department. Other agencies in Dallas County recorded 4,244 assault victims in these years (DART police 1,149, Baylor Health Care System police 1,088, Dallas ISD police 745, Dallas County Sheriff 484, UT Southwestern police 362, Parkland (county hospital district) police 325, SMU police 73, Dallas College police 10). Some work partly outside the city, and some began reporting partway through, so they are left out. Assaults only they recorded are missing.
Police data reflects where officers patrol and who calls them. This data cannot separate more policing or more reporting from more assaults.
NIBRS records ethnicity apart from race, and it is unknown or unspecified for 1.0% of women victims. 223 women recorded as White (0.9%) have unknown ethnicity; where it is known, 72.5% of White-race women are Hispanic. They are counted as White. If they were all Hispanic, Black women's rate would be 2.23x Hispanic women's instead of 2.26x, and 4.04x White women's instead of 3.91x. Hispanic of any race counts as Hispanic, so 332 women recorded as Black and Hispanic are in the Hispanic group.
20 women victims have unknown race. Spread over the four groups like known victims of the same assault type and premises, they do not move the ratios (2.26x Hispanic, 3.91x White and 13.52x Asian).
Partner assaults are identified from the victim-offender relationship, which is unknown or blank for 13.6% of Black, 13.5% of Hispanic, 13.3% of White and 16.3% of Asian women victims. Partner assault is 37.5% of assaults on Black women, and 43.7% on Hispanic, 41.5% on White and 44.2% on Asian women.
Dallas police file 16.3% of assaults under the FBI's commercial or office building category and 5.2% under field or woods, against 0.9% or less and 0.6% or less in Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Austin and El Paso, the five other largest city police departments in Texas. Their own records list apartment complexes (12.9% of assaults in the city file) and outdoor areas (8.5%) as premises, and NIBRS has no such categories, so these two most likely hold them. Home is lower to match: 45.0% of assaults, against 50.0% to 68.0% elsewhere.
Aggravated (13A) and simple (13B) assault reported by the Dallas Police Department, individual victims of any age, 6,282 of them under 17. Non-fatal shootings are aggravated assaults in NIBRS and are included. Left out: 640 assaults on officers; 16,389 intimidation victims (threats with no attack). 90 American Indian or Alaska Native and 107 Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander victims are counted in the totals but not compared, because counts this small give unstable rates. 282 victims with unknown age fall out of the age test only.
Victims cover January 2022 to December 2025; the population is the ACS 2024 5-year estimate, an average over 2020 to 2024.
Dallas draws commuters and visitors, and rates divide by residents only. NIBRS resident status is blank for 97.0% of victims here, so victims who live elsewhere cannot be separated.
The city's incident file has no victim age. In the Where section, ages come from the city's Police Person table, linked by incident, race, ethnicity and sex. 98.2% of women in simple assaults and 95.3% of women in aggravated assaults have a linked age; the rest drop out of the model only.
Police division and tract poverty, income, unemployment and housing are shaped by segregation and disinvestment. 32.7% of Black women live in census tracts where 25% or more of residents are poor, against 24.6% of Hispanic women, 5.4% of White women and 9.0% of Asian women. In the city file's subset, tract socioeconomics narrow the gap from 2.8x to 2.18x. Where a control narrows a gap, the gap has been located, not explained away.
The Asian comparison rests on 283 Asian women victims. Between the two sources and across years it moved up to 24%, against 14% or less for the others, so it is left out of the headline.
Rates are victims per 100,000 residents per year over 4.0 years; cells under 2,000 residents are not rated. Women only from the tests onward. Sources: FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) state files for Texas, Dallas Police Department, 2022 to 2025; US Census Bureau ACS 2020 to 2024 five-year estimates via Census Reporter; Dallas Police Department, Police Incidents, Dallas OpenData (replication and the location section); Dallas Police Department, Police Person, Dallas OpenData (victim ages for the location section); Dallas police divisions, 2022 boundaries, Dallas Police Department GIS.