The Arlington City Council convened in a special session on April 21, 2026, at 10:45 a.m. in the Council Briefing Room. The meeting included an executive session from 10:51 a.m. to 3:02 p.m., followed by a work session and discussion of issues items. The council discussed the 2025 annual report from the Arlington Police Department, a proposed Dallas Cowboys lease extension, a homelessness update, and several committee reports.
All right, folks. We will now go into an executive close session. Good afternoon, everybody. We're going to go ahead and call the afternoon session of the City Council back to order. We're going to move on down to three point one, Chief Al Jones. How are you, sir? Great, good afternoon, Mayor Council. Al Jones, Chief of Police. Today I will be presenting the two thousand twenty-five annual report. It's a collection of great work that we were able to accomplish last year. Numbers for Arlington, traffic safety, UTA code case partnership. Please note these numbers are accurate as of April 10th, two thousand twenty-six. Compared 2024 to last year, crime against property was down 16%. Compared 2024 to last year, crimes against society was up 12%. These crimes in this category includes narcotics, prostitution, disorderly conduct, public intoxication types of offenses. A rise in the number of arrests and cases filed in this category aligns with our proactive policing strategy. Simply put, our officers are actively seeking to disrupt these types of crimes in our city while reducing the impact that these crimes may have on innocent residents and visitors. In 2025, we conducted over 103,000 traffic stops. Of note, seven were pedestrians and eight were motorcyclists. We made over 1,300 DWI arrests. The map on the right represents where the fatality crashes have occurred. As you can see, while they're primarily concentrated along the highways, every section of Arlington was impacted. In 2023, we implemented a multi-pronged safe road initiative program. The initiative was aimed at improving traffic safety throughout the city. In 2024, we expanded that Safe Roads Initiative program and added safety traffic safety component to it. In 2025, we continued to be more transparent with our community. We wanted to share where our trafficking officers and the traffic enforcement details would be located each week. We provide the information on different social media platforms so drivers will be able to be aware that the officers were in the area and correcting driving behavior if necessary. That is showed on the screen. We had 15 homicides in 2025 compared to 17 in 2024. Our clearance rate on murders was 100%. That's great, 100% for 2025. The national average in 2024 is around 61%. 27 were disturbance related. 31 of the murders were robbery related. Unfortunately, minorities accounted for 81% of our homicide victims. UTA code case partnership. Unsolved murders are assigned to homicide detectives to work between active cases. UTA Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice launched a new advanced course in partnership with us, giving students the opportunity to review real code cases in an effort to develop new leads and to provide our detectives with feedback on potential paths. The department provided the students with access to all reports, materials from the case files, except for physical evidence. Shortly after the inception of the program, the students assisted detectives with a notable investigation, which led to the arrest of a suspect in the Asynthia Gonzalez case. We conducted a joint press conference with UTA professors and students following the arrest. The case and interest in this unique course gained the national attention. Reducing violent crime in Arlington continues to be our top priority as an agency. As we strategize on how we're going to combat it, one key thing we look at is what is driving it. Arlington Police Department strategically assigned investigators to regional and federal task force to serve as a force multiplier. The task force collaborate, enables rapid information sharing, identification of emergency emerging trends, recognition of offenders, and hence in coordination of enforcement strategies. Since January 2022, Arlington Police Department has documented 180 criminal incidents involving kickdoor members, involving aggravated assaults, robberies, burglaries, shootings, drug offenses, all that occurred within the city of Arlington. We made multiple arrests. We filed numerous state charges against these members in the past, but we wanted to explore additional avenues to disrupt this their activity in Arlington.