SAN ANTONIO – Nelson Wolff has been the Bexar County judge for more than 20 years. He has also served in numerous other leadership positions in our community, such as San Antonio mayor.
Wolff joined Leading SA on Sunday to talk about recent issues in the city and his legacy.
He discussed the cite and release program and a recent uptick in crime.
“There’s no correlation between crime and that program. Second, what’s driving the crime, in my estimation, is the fact that there’s guns everywhere. The legislature and the governor took away the license, made it easy for anybody to get guns today. And so when it has happened, it’s got into the hands of people that shouldn’t have had them,” Wolff said.
As far as reducing non-violent crimes in SA, the judge did have some ideas.
“The second thing is crimes that are not a very violent nature, but there are thefts and robberies. And I can say that I think the best thing to do, you got to form a good partnership with the police department and with the sheriff’s office. During the time I was mayor, we had all sorts of prevention programs...,” Wolff said. “I would advocate that more and more neighborhood associations need to get together and help protect each other and work with the police in charge of the park.”
We then talked about the recent issue of the upgrades needed for the Missions stadium, named the Nelson W. Wolff Municipal Stadium.
“It’s probably going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 to $10 million to do it. But I think there’s a sense in the community that we’d like to have a new ballpark. One, I’d love to see it downtown. The other proposal is on the North Side, close to UTSA, to be able to help their baseball program. Also, I would hope one of those measures will work. At this time, though, no one has come forward with a plan and the proposal to deal with the city, and the county will wait and see what comes up. As you know, we partnered. The city and the county partnered on the Toyota soccer field. That’s been a great success and has worked out well. It’s possible that could be done again if the right location came up,” Wolff said.
As for his legacy, after serving our community for decades, Wolff said his priorities have included taking care of the environment, economic development and criminal justice.
“I think in economic development, in preparing our workforce was another thing that I spent a great deal of time on...,” Wolff said. “We’ve done a lot of work, I think, on the criminal justice system, focusing on trying to save people’s lives -- better them rather than make them worse. So that’s where I spent a great deal of my time.”
You can watch the full interview with Wolff in the video player above.