Reporter covering criminal justice, healthcare, housing and more at The Lab Report Dallas. @dallasnews alumna. El Paso raised. š© kelli@labreportdallas.com.
Joined September 2017
- Tweets 4,224
- Following 901
- Followers 2,106
- Likes 7,230
517 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
2 Jun 2025
š§µ Life news!: Iām leaving @dallasnews after 4.5 great years, but Iām not going far.
Iām thrilled to announce Iām joining @SharonFGrigsby and @goodmoine at The Lab Report Dallas, anĀ independent newsroom powered by the Child Poverty Action Lab. labreportdallas.org/
10
8
97
9,033
Kelli Smith retweeted
12h
It's that time of year again: Oxfordās Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) has put out its 2026 Digital News Report. The Nieman Lab team broke down some key findings ā including how people continue to abandon news sites and apps in favor of social media and, increasingly, chatbots to get their news.
niemanlab.org/2026/06/news-sā¦
1
12
18
2,213
Jun 5
In east Oak Cliff, a vacant lot in a high-crime area is undergoing a quiet transformation.
My dispatch from Dallasā Prosperity Park, a site now run by kids:
labreportdallas.com/neighborā¦
77
Kelli Smith retweeted
Jun 5
āTeachers Are Going to Hate Itā: How Social Media Apps Hooked Teens at School nytimes.com/2026/06/04/us/soā¦ via @NYTimes
1
2
440
Kelli Smith retweeted
May 28
Police officers have become fixtures in Texas schools since the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. Some have used heavy-handed tactics on children, often in response to minor misbehavior, an @nytimes @ExpressNews investigation found.
expressnews.com/news/educatiā¦
1
12
9
975
May 27
Dallas used pandemic relief funds to fix houses in Oak Cliff and elsewhere. But in the Tenth Street Historic District, promises remain broken.
An important @goodmoine story worth the time to read:
labreportdallas.com/public-sā¦
106
May 21
After 47 people were connected to housing or treatment, a major South Dallas homeless camp was set to close Thursday via police and city crews.
Housing Forward, which led the initiative, says it didn't expect police to detain all 23 people they came across that morning. š§µš
1
2
147
May 21
Some of the detained said they'd already placed in housing and had just returned that morning to gather their belongings.
For @labreportdallas, I dove into what happened at the break of dawn last Thursdayāand the debate over Dallas' homelessness strategy:
labreportdallas.com/criminalā¦
1
70
Apr 29
281 detentions. $500 fines. A mounting pile of warrants.
Records show a new Dallas PD team has zip-tied unhoused people across 61 locations in a pivot toward enforcement. My latest @labreportdallas on the cityās new approachāand the alarm itās sounding:
labreportdallas.com/criminalā¦
15
4
14
7,289
Kelli Smith retweeted
Apr 23
Breaking @TexasTribune: Dallas PD revise ICE policy after Gov. Abbott threatened funding. Most notably, the new version cut language that says officers may not prolong detention to further investigate people's immigration status or to hold them for ICE. shorturl.at/n1Zhf
4
52
63
7,677
Apr 8
Not long ago, Dallas' juvenile justice system reached a crisis point. Families were decrying inhumane conditions, and researchers IDād kids who hadnāt needed to be jailed at all.
County leaders say thatās begun to changeāand a new report backs that up:
labreportdallas.com/p/dallasā¦
2
105
Kelli Smith retweeted
Mar 18
The foster care system is in big trouble in North Texas. A baby and an infant have died. A judge today appointed a receiver over the nonprofit handling case management. Before the ruling, @SharonFGrigsby had spent weeks in court watching things go wrong. labreportdallas.com/p/the-prā¦
3
5
420
Feb 13
For weeks I analyzed where Dallas PD allocates patrol officers and what that says about its priorities. It raised a complicated question: How do top cops manage staffing for perception vs. risk in a big city like Dallas?
I tried to make sense of the data for @labreportdallas.
2
5
8
886
Feb 13
After DPD faced a spike in violence in 2020, priorities appeared to shift. Patrol staffing fell 12% from 2020-24, and response times shot up.
The patrol bureau began to grow again in 2025ābut some neighborhoods are benefiting more than others.
More here:
labreportdallas.com/p/dallasā¦
2
209
Kelli Smith retweeted
Jan 26
BREAKING: The Border Patrol's Greg Bovino has been ousted from his role of "Commander at Large"āand Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski could be next to lose their jobs, sources tell @NickMiroff
174
565
2,187
680,862
Kelli Smith retweeted
Jan 25
āAs of Saturday evening, the family said they had still not heard from anyone at a federal law enforcement agency about their sonās death.ā apnews.com/article/immigratiā¦
83
1,276
3,445
126,811
Kelli Smith retweeted
Jan 21
A non-profit fed thousands of hungry Dallas ISD students. A CBS News Texas investigation found that when the work stopped, the fundraising didn't. cbsnews.com/texas/news/dallaā¦
1
1,423
Jan 15
šØ The Lab Report is looking for our fourth writer! Come join our small team writing in-depth stories about issues affecting Dallas familiesāfrom healthcare, housing, criminal justice, to transportation, and more.
Happy to answer any questions. š
childpovertyactionlab.org/caā¦
2
154
Kelli Smith retweeted
Jan 6
šØ šThis is my first āĀ and last ā story for @CBSNews
Across the country hundreds of officers accused of crime are working lucrative off-duty jobs. Most police policies do nothing to stop them.
2
8
11
1,345
Jan 7
The stats are in, and they confirm a big trend: Dallas ended 2025 with 141 murders, a *10-year low.*
To put that in perspective:
š 43 fewer people murdered than in 2024.
š Dallas' 4th lowest murder count since 1995.
A significant drop that has largely flown under the radar.
1
122
Jan 7
We noted this trend today in @labreportdallas's weekly story, which is a look-ahead to 2026.
Other topics we're monitoring: DART, housing preservation, healthcare costs, and the county jail. ā¤µļø
labreportdallas.com/p/these-ā¦
1
120