Domestic violence strangulations in which the victim passed out are running well ahead of last year in Dallas, according to a police briefing prepared for the City Council's Public Safety Committee, which meets at 1 p.m. today at City Hall.
Through Sept. 30, the department counted 102 family violence strangulations involving loss of consciousness, compared with 85 at the same point in 2025, an increase of nearly 18%. Strangulations without loss of consciousness rose about 3%, from 814 to 839.
The briefing is from Maj. Phyllis Nobles, who leads the department's Special Victims Division.
The lethality checklist
Officers who respond to an assault between current or former intimate partners are required to run a lethality assessment, a questionnaire meant to flag victims at the highest risk of being killed and connect them with advocates on the spot. Through September, officers completed 4,045 of the assessments.
In 2,391 of them, the victim screened in as high danger, and 377 victims chose to talk with a counselor.
The department says it revised the form last year so that strangulation automatically produces a high-danger result. That designation gives a victim immediate access to help such as a counselor or a ride to a shelter, according to the slides.
Warrant roundup this month
Police are in the middle of Operation Purple Shield, a domestic violence warrant sweep that runs from Oct. 1 through Oct. 31 with the U.S. Marshals task force, the department's fugitive unit and patrol crime response teams. The Domestic Violence Unit has 514 active warrants, the briefing says. A similar October operation last year produced 65 arrests.
