According to a department spokesperson who spoke to the Observer on Wednesday, the Dallas Police Department has been looking into criminal conduct in North Dallas for the past year that members of a Venezuelan gang are carrying out.
The agency claims that a number of people in the North Dallas region are thought to be connected to the Tren de Aragua gang, a criminal group out of Venezuela that has allegedly been infiltrating the country in recent months.
The agency released a statement saying, “Our department is collaborating with other agencies to address possible crimes linked to this and other gangs in our city.”
A department spokesman continued, “It’s an ongoing investigation, so I’m sure they’re looking into [all crimes],” a department spokesperson added. “They’re going to look into drugs, into violence, into physical incidents, everything.”
The veracity of a video that was uploaded to the social media site X on Tuesday is something that the police were unable to verify. A “group of Venezuelans beat a helpless man in Dallas,” according to the post.
The far-right social media account “Libs of TikTok” shared the grainy 23-second video, which shows a limp guy being viciously hit while gunshots are fired off camera. The video has received nearly six million views.
“Violent illegal alien gangs are taking over American cities,” the post reads. “This is Kamala’s America.”
Congressman Chip Roy of Austin retweeted the video along with the statement, “We must have mass deportations.” The Observer inquired about the credibility of the danger posed by the Tren de Aragua gang in North Texas with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, but neither official responded.
The message appears to be taking advantage of the Tren de Aragua gang’s recent national prominence brought about by an Aurora, Colorado, social media frenzy. A video showing armed men passing through an apartment building last week spurred rumors that the gang had “taken over” the Denver neighborhood. Similar to Dallas, the Libs of TikTok account shared the video.
Social media posts asserted that gang members, who were committing crimes such as looting, were receiving rent payments from apartment occupants under duress.
The city of Aurora acknowledged the existence of a “small Tren de Aragua (TdA) presence” in the area, but officials claimed that an abundance of “misleading information” had misrepresented the incident as a “isolated event.”
In a video posted to social media, acting Aurora police chief Heather Morris stated, “We’ve been talking to the residents here and learning from them to find out what exactly is going on, and there’s definitely a different picture,” interim Aurora Police Chief Heather Morris said in a video shared to social media. “I’m not saying that there’s not gang members that don’t live in this community.”
The city additionally verified that Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirino, a member of Tren de Aragua who goes by the aliases “Cookie” or “Galleta,” was taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement after being arrested in Aurora in July. Arrests have been made by us. We’re going to keep making arrests,” the city wrote on social media.
Mayor Mike Coffman of Aurora claims that the video’s social media exposure put a “overwhelming” amount of strain on the city’s infrastructure.
“It’s overwhelming our 911 system, or our emergency call center, and so it’s actually hurting our ability to respond to crime,” Coffman told the local NBC affiliate station 9NEWS. “I would hope people would not do that. I think we’re in some sort of environment of hysteria right now over this.”
