If someone asked you this morning what crime is rising in your neighborhood, could you answer?

Probably not.

If you live in Seagoville Farms, do you know whether burglaries are climbing around you? If you live in Heartland, do you know whether vehicle thefts and assaults are getting better or worse?

Probably not.

That is a public safety problem.

Seagoville and Crandall residents spend millions of dollars supporting city government. That includes police salaries, equipment, and patrol operations. Officers are expected to patrol neighborhoods, investigate crimes, and protect residents.

But protecting the public should also mean informing the public. Right now, residents are being asked to guard themselves without a real picture of what they are guarding against.

A Blotter That Barely Blots

Seagoville has something called a Weekly Blotter. That sounds good until residents actually depend on it.

As of this week, the city has gone about two weeks without publishing a new entry. Even when the blotter does appear, it offers only a handful of selected incidents.

A blotter should not exist just so a city can say it publishes one. It should answer real questions. Where are burglaries happening? Are vehicles being targeted in certain neighborhoods? Are catalytic converters disappearing? Are assaults on the rise?

Selected incidents without broader trends leave residents with fragments, not information.

Protecting the public should also include informing the public.

Crandall Residents Know Even Less

Crandall’s Police Department website explains how to request records and check case status. It offers no regular public breakdown of citywide crime trends.

That gap matters. The numbers are not small.

Crandall recorded 78 larceny and theft offenses in 2025, according to a four year review by Shop in Seagoville. It also logged 52 burglaries, 33 aggravated assaults, and 20 motor vehicle thefts.

Between 2022 and 2025, burglaries climbed from 37 to 52. Aggravated assaults climbed from 21 to 33.

Residents should not have to dig through state records or a local news site to learn that. It should come directly from their Police Department. Regularly.

Seagoville Has Warning Signs Too

Seagoville’s own numbers make the same case for transparency.

Through the first ten months of 2024, the city recorded 146 theft and larceny offenses. The same period added 75 motor vehicle thefts and 47 burglaries.

Theft and larceny were up 11 percent over the same period the year before.

These numbers are not shared to frighten anyone. They are shared because residents can act on these statistics. Information changes behavior, and that change can prevent crime.

If burglaries are rising, homeowners can add lighting, cameras, and stronger locks. If vehicle burglaries are increasing, police can warn residents to lock doors and hide valuables.

Protect And Serve Includes Informing

Crandall’s own description of its Police Department lists protecting life and property among its duties. It also lists working with the community to address shared concerns.

Good. Then give the community what it needs to participate. Residents cannot help solve a problem they do not know exists.

Real community policing means giving residents a clear crime picture every week or every month. Not six months later. Not buried inside a PDF.

Residents Have A Right To Ask

Texas public information law gives residents broad rights to request government records. That does not mean every statistic must be posted automatically each week. That is the legal question.

The public safety question is different. Should residents have to file a records request just to learn whether burglary is rising in their city? Absolutely not. A responsible police department should want residents to know.

Seagoville Farms? Heartland? Who Knows?

Citywide totals alone are not enough. Suppose Seagoville reports 50 burglaries in a year. Where did they happen?

If 30 occurred inside one subdivision, residents there deserve to know. Nobody is asking for victim names or details that compromise investigations.

Police departments can publish neighborhood level trends without identifying anyone. Many agencies across America already use crime maps, dashboards, and weekly summaries.

Technology is not the obstacle. Priority is.

Silence Does Not Make Communities Safer

Colleges have wrestled with a similar issue regarding sexual assaults for years. Federal law requires many schools to disclose campus crime statistics. Female students cannot make informed safety decisions when real threats stay hidden.

Municipalities operate under different laws, but the public safety principle is the same. People cannot protect themselves against dangers they do not know exist.

Hiding a problem does not eliminate it. It only eliminates awareness of it. That may keep statistics out of view. It does not make residents safer.

This Should Be Easy

Neither Seagoville nor Crandall needs an expensive new program. Each department could publish a simple weekly report showing:

• Major crimes reported during the previous week
• Year to date totals by offense
• Comparison with the previous year
• Neighborhood or general area, when appropriate
• Basic prevention recommendations
• Significant arrests, when legally appropriate
• Clearance rates showing how many serious cases are solved

Put it on the city website. Post it on Facebook. Email it to subscribers. Make public information actually public.

The Verdict

Residents of Seagoville and Crandall should not have to wonder whether crime is getting better or worse. They should not hear about burglaries through neighborhood gossip.

They should not need an open records request and three government databases to understand what is happening five blocks from home.

Public safety requires an informed public.

If local police departments will not provide residents with a clear picture of crime, Shop in Seagoville will keep doing what local journalism is supposed to do. We will dig through records, examine the statistics and compare the years. We will ask where the crimes are happening.

This is not opposition to police. It is support for public safety.

Taxpayers deserve nothing less.

Merv Moore is the Editor in Chief of Shop in Seagoville — Local News. Local Deals. Local People. His Moore or Less column offers hard hitting, opinionated commentary. It does not shy away from uncomfortable topics.