Dallas Police Real-Time Crime Center & CONNECT DALLAS Camera Registry
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
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Dallas police can now see a map of where private security cameras exist across the city — but registering a camera doesn't hand police your video feed unless you choose to, and there's no independent study of whether any of it cuts crime.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is press reporting; no primary evaluation was located. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 6 more in Dallas · 🛡️ Safety & security guide · 👥 Society projects
Dallas Police Department has operated a real-time crime center since 2019, feeding footage from department-owned cameras — including a 'Starlight' camera program installed at high-crime convenience stores starting in late 2019 — to analysts who monitor live activity and support field officers. In April 2024, DPD launched CONNECT DALLAS, a voluntary registry (built with vendor Fūsus) that lets residents and businesses register private camera locations so investigators know where footage might exist during an incident; registrants can optionally grant DPD live-feed access during emergencies. Registering does not, by itself, give police access to a live video stream. DPD has cited crime declines near expanded camera sites but has not published an independent evaluation of either program.
📊 Impact
DPD attributed a 'dramatic decline in crime' at the original Starlight camera sites (three locations, late 2019) to justify expanding to additional sites by September 2020; no independently audited before/after crime statistics were found for either the Starlight program or CONNECT DALLAS.
🎓 Lesson
A voluntary, tiered camera registry (know a camera exists vs. grant live access) is a more privacy-conscious model than blanket surveillance — but 'crime went down where we added cameras' from the department running the cameras is not the same as an independent evaluation.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Dallas Police Real-Time Crime Center & CONNECT DALLAS Camera Registry” — Dallas, United States. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/dallas-real-time-crime-center/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.