Dallas Parks and the city’s Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence presented a new Dallas Parks Safety Dashboard to the Parks, Trails, and the Environment Committee on Oct. 6, 2025. The dashboard automates ranger and marshal reporting, updates daily, and shows visits, infractions, trail miles and compliance rates across the city’s parks and trails.

The dashboard is intended to speed internal decisions and increase transparency by moving reporting from a quarterly to a daily cadence, officials said. Committee members pressed staff on how the dashboard ties into Dallas Police Department (DPD) records, how response times will be captured, and how community feedback shaped the tool.

Kevin Mundy, superintendent of Dallas Parks and Recreation Department, said the dashboard is a collaboration with the Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence and that it reflects priorities in the department’s park safety and security strategic plan.

“Ranger and marshal reporting was occurring quarterly, and they wanted to increase that rate,” Doctor Brenda Andrzejk, chief data officer and director of the Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence, said. “It would have taken approximately 60-ish hours to produce this report manually from their various sources. We were able to automate it so they receive it daily.”

Jocelyn Guerrero, who demonstrated the tool, said the dashboard includes two pages: a park rangers page and a marshals page. The ranger page shows total visits (35,020 for fiscal year 2025, as reported during the briefing), total infractions (more than 4,000), trail miles recorded (about 2,000), and a 91.2 percent compliance rate for verbal warnings. Users can filter by fiscal year, month, council district and park maintenance district, and click individual parks on a map to see counts.

The marshals page includes an additional “shift type” filter: “first watch” (11:00 p.m.–4:49 a.m.) and “general shift.” It reports visits, infractions, citations, warnings and arrests, and breaks top infractions by shift type and park.

Committee members asked several operational questions during the briefing. Council Member Lori Blair sought clarity on the relationship between the infractions number and citations, and whether the 4,083 figure represented citations or all infractions. Jeremy McMahon, who oversees the rangers and marshals program, said the rangers record infractions (which can be education or warnings) and that marshals issue citations for offenses beyond the rangers’ citation authority.

“An infraction on this page may not be a citation,” McMahon said. “Infraction could be speaking with somebody in the park about their dog being off leash… For the marshal, usually that ends up being a citation or further an arrest depending on the situation.”

Committee members repeatedly pressed for integration with DPD data and for clearer rules about where incidents are recorded. Committee members said residents expect to see one authoritative picture of park safety rather than segmented data. Staff said the dashboard currently pulls directly from the marshal and ranger e-log source systems and is updated automatically every day, and that DPD data is not yet integrated.

“We are pulling directly from the source system, and it’s being updated every single day,” Andrzejk said. “We do have a phase 2 coming where we’re incorporating some of the DPD data as well.”

Renee Johnson, deputy director of Dallas Park and Recreation, described the department’s layered safety approach: rangers engage and educate park users; marshals and, when needed, DPD handle escalated incidents. She said the dashboard adds a new operational layer that will help identify trends more quickly than the prior quarterly reports.

Interim City Marshal Clifton Knight said the marshal office already compiles citywide marshal activity in a separate dashboard and that the parks-specific feed allows managers to see detailed park allocation and deployment. Knight said the parks division’s portal captures park marshal activity in a way that is now automatable and easier to aggregate month-to-month.

Several council members asked about response-time metrics and whether the dashboard will show how quickly residents can expect an enforcement or response. Staff said they do not yet have response-time metrics but identified response time and DPD integration as priorities for phase 2. Officials said they expect some phase 2 deliverables in the spring.

Staff noted other public-facing crime data already available: the city’s crime analytics dashboard—compiled from NIBRS data reported to the FBI—is the authoritative public source for citywide reportable crime statistics. Staff said events that require 911 and rise to reportable crime should appear there.

Committee members also raised process and outreach concerns. Several members asked that the dashboard rollout include broader community input beyond park board committees and requested one-on-one walkthroughs to help council members read the visuals. Staff offered to meet individually with council members and to return with the park board ad hoc safety committee after the committee’s feedback.

Staff described the dashboard’s primary benefit as time savings and operational visibility: it moves a reporting task that used to require many staff hours to an automated daily product that managers can use to identify hotspots and allocate resources more quickly.

Next steps identified in the briefing included soliciting additional committee and community feedback, returning to the park board and park board ad hoc safety committee, and developing a phase 2 plan to add DPD data and response-time metrics with a target of spring 2026 for some deliverables.

The committee did not take formal action on the dashboard during the briefing; staff invited further questions and said they would return with updated functionality and community-engagement plans.