SAN ANTONIO – In November, KSAT’s Know My Neighborhood segment concentrated on Alamo Ranch and the issues families in the area faced, one of which related to law enforcement.
Now, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office is making changes, and as part of new initiatives in 2024, Alamo Ranch families will see an increased BCSO presence.
“In 2024, we are going to be adding additional districts,” BCSO Deputy Adam Turbeville said.
He said they would include a “faster response time and more deputies in the area.”
Turbeville has patrolled Alamo Ranch for over 10 years and has seen the area’s growth firsthand.
“When I started patrolling out here, it was very secluded, very wooded, a lot of cow pastures, and now it’s houses as far as the eye can see,” he said.
Turbeville said BSCO saw the KSAT Know My Neighborhood special and is responding accordingly.
“We try to keep up with the demand and request from the community on a regular basis. We get requests for additional traffic enforcement, and we have our motors unit. Additionally, we will send some of our patrol units in the afternoon and nighttime hours,” Turbeville said.
There are changes on the way, but calls for service remain consistent.
During the day, “We do get a lot of requests in the Alamo Ranch area for the traffic unit due to speeding and racing,” Turbeville said.
At night, “We are looking for burglary, suspicious vehicles, suspicious persons,” he continued.
These issues are not going away on their own.
“From September to the beginning of December, we had 77 calls for burglaries — but that includes burglar vehicles, burglar residences, burglar buildings — anything that has the title of burglary, even had a burglary of a coin-operated machine,” Turbeville said.
And even though the goal is to see more deputies on the streets, in the new year, there is also a new concentration off the streets and on your phone.
“It’s a digital age, right? It comes with a territory, so now phone numbers can be spoofed. We get phone numbers that say San Antonio, Texas, and I answer it, and it’s a scammer from overseas. With the increase in technology, we see a huge increase in the varieties of different scams being perpetrated,” Turbeville said.
Sheriff Javier Salazar said senior fraud and scams are something BCSO sees becoming increasingly prevalent, and there are new efforts to combat that.
In 2024, BCSO will add 50 more deputy positions, which could go a long way around the community.
“They are going to be spread out through the needs of the sheriff’s office, whether it’s west Bexar County, east, north and south. We are going to get an increase in deputies, and on top of that, we are going to get an increase in investigators. And as the populations increase, we need an increase in our patrolmen,” Turbeville said.