SAN ANTONIO – Crime may be down 3% overall in San Antonio, but it is not across the board.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus presented the latest crime statistics to the Public Safety Committee on Tuesday. The statistics showed decreases in all three major crime categories for January through August when compared to the same timeframe in 2023.
- Crimes against persons (violent crime): -1.9%
- Crimes against society: -2.1%
- Crimes against property: -3.4%
Though assaults stayed roughly even, the number of homicides in the first eight months of the year fell from 113 to 83. The spike in homicides in 2022 was partially due to 53 migrants who died in a sweltering hot tractor-trailer that June.
The burst of car thefts that drove a bump in crime last year also appears to be subsiding. Though the 9,276 reported thefts are still higher than the entirety of 2021, it’s a 27% drop from 2023.
The city’s biggest source of crime, theft offenses, also fell by 6%.
Some crimes, like drug charges, saw a bump, but none were as large as the surge of property damage and vandalism cases, which San Antonio Police classify as criminal mischief.
The number of cases jumped from 12,287 by the end of August 2023 to 16,651 this year is a nearly 36% difference.
It wasn’t immediately clear where the jump in those cases was coming from, but McManus told city council members and reporters that he has heard from the downtown business and residential communities that “much of the destruction” is being done by homeless people.
“I’ve met on more than- more times than I want to meet with business owners and communities downtown complaining about the constant criminal mischief events that are happening to their property,” the chief said.
McManus also confirmed that criminal mischief cases were part of the reason the city plans to test an AI-fueled security camera network along part of Commerce Street.
The city has also been following a Violent Crime Reduction Plan designed by criminologists from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Prof. Michael Smith gave an 18-month update on the plan’s progress. Violent street crime has trended downward since the plan was implemented at the beginning of 2023.
However, Councilman Jalen Mckee-Rodriguez pointed out that recent crime data from the FBI shows nationwide drops in violent crime.
Smith told reporters after the meeting it was “well known” in the research community that “there are significant problems with our national crime data.” Some of the nation’s largest departments don’t report data to the FBI anymore, he said.
Smith said violent crime was possibly already trending downward before the violent crime plan’s implementation. However, he added that the plan could have steepened any drop.
SEE SAPD’S PRESENTATION ON CRIME STATISTICS AND THE UTSA VIOLENT CRIME REDUCTION PLAN BELOW:
240917 Crime Stats & VCPP by Spencer Heath on Scribd