SAPD lays out plan for violent crime
UTSA experts develop evidence-based methods
In response to increasing numbers of homicides and other violent crimes in recent years, the city of San Antonio is taking a scientific approach in its efforts to reverse the trend.
The San Antonio Police Department began 2023 by implementing the first phase of a multiyear plan that aims to use evidence-based strategies to reduce violent crime in urban areas. The plan — developed by criminologists at the University of Texas San Antonio and calling for new ways of dealing with high-crime areas and violent offenders — could be in practice for three to five years, though its creators hope the SAPD will make it a long-term approach.
The UTSA team, consisting of five faculty members and one graduate student, developed a similar plan for the Dallas Police Department, which has seen violent crime reduced in that city since the plan was implemented two years ago. Within the first year, homicides in Dallas declined 13 percent.
Mike Smith, a professor and director of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at UTSA, said the creators of San Antonio’s plan are cautiously optimistic that it will achieve similar results.
“Our problems in San Antonio aren’t unique, but every city is different, so we hope we can replicate the results here,” Smith said. “That would be awesome to help move the needle on violent crime in San Antonio.”
Last year marked San Antonio’s deadliest year in the last three decades, with homicides increasing 43.5 percent in 2022 — to 231 recorded homicides from 161 in 2021.
Since the 1990s, when San Antonio was labeled the nation’s
“drive-by shooting capital,” the homicide rate generally fell until it spiked in 2016. After that, homicides fell again until 2020, after which San Antonio has again experienced rising numbers.
In addition to San Antonio and Dallas, the UTSA team is working with the police in Salt Lake City and Tacoma, Wash., to introduce similar plans in their cities. Other major cities such as Houston and Pittsburgh have started to develop similar strategies.
“We are excited to work with the San Antonio Police and city of San Antonio because this is our hometown,” Smith said. “It is great to work here and be able to bring this practice to our own city.”
High-visibility deterrence
The crime reduction plan consists of three tiers, with short-, mid- and long-term strategies that are intended to build on each other.
The short-term plan focuses on hot-spot policing — targeting small areas where violent crimes are more likely to occur by establishing high officer visibility to deter violent offenders.
This part of the plan has been in effect since Jan. 1.
Officers from the SAPD’S street crimes patrol and community policing units will rotate through 28 hot spots — 100by-100-meter grids across the city that are experiencing high levels of violent crime. The tactic involves officers sitting in their vehicles while flashing their patrol lights for 15-minute periods during peak crime hours. The plan calls for officers to remain in their vehicles unless they see a crime or an emergency in progress.
Smith said the tactic is an evidence-based, highly effective means for reducing violent crime in small geographic areas.
As part of such hot-spot policing, every 60 days, the research team will analyze information such as calls for service and incident reports with respect to the dates, times and locations that violent crimes are most prevalent to determine when and where officers need to be stationed.
Research has shown, Smith said, that declines in calls for service and arrests for violent offenses have occurred in high-visibility patrol areas for up to three months after cycles of hot-spot policing end.
Community resources
The second phase of the plan employs what it calls problemoriented, place-based policing. This aims to focus police and other community resources toward violence-prone areas to address underlying conditions contributing to greater prevalence of violent crime.
“Sometimes solutions don’t involve police and needs other community resources,” Smith said.
The problem-oriented, placebased policing phase will begin six to 12 months after hot-spot policing is implemented.
Focus on offenders
The plan’s final phase, which won’t be implemented for at least a year, will focus on the 5 percent of offenders who commit half of the city’s violent crime, San Antonio Police Chief William Mcmanus said.
Those offenders will be invited or required to participate in a program that will employ key people in the criminal justice system to emphasize that violence in the community is unacceptable and provide resources to address needs associated with violence.
Officials hope that by engaging social science experts focused on areas like housing, job training, education and more, they can bring to bear resources that address reasons behind people committing violent offenses.
The long-term plan also calls for enlisting people who are influential in offenders’ lives to provide another source of support. Smith said that including people such as families, faith leaders and victims’ families can reinforce the message that the offender’s actions have consequences while providing support to make it easier to stop.
The people in the program will have case managers to follow up with them and help them quit lifestyles that contributed to their involvement in violent crimes.
“Many times, the chances of becoming a victim of violent crime increases astronomically if you are living or engaging in a high-risk lifestyle,” Mcmanus said in 2022.
Moving forward
Smith said the crime reduction plan relies on the best evidence-based strategies compiled from decades of criminal justice research.
“These aren’t ideas pulled out of thin air. They are rooted in 30 years of evidence,” he said. “Science evolves and improves, and another group of criminologists may come up with something better down the road, but for now, what the evidence shows is that this is the best practice.”
Not everyone, however, is on board with the plan and its crime-prevention strategies. Several City Council members were critical when Mcmanus presented the plan during a Public Safety Committee meeting on Feb. 21.
“My overall concern is the human collateral damage with hyper concentrating police in lower-income communities of color,” said District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo, who represents the West and near Southwest sides.
She highlighted the case of Tyre Nichols, who died in early January at the hands of multiple Memphis, Tenn., police officers who were seen in video footage brutally beating him. The officers were part of their department’s specialized unit called Scorpion, which focused on hotspot policing.
Mcmanus said San Antonio’s plan doesn’t resemble the Memphis unit in “any shape or form.”
Likewise, Smith said there is nothing in the plan that would condone controversial tactics such as dragnet policing, stopand-frisk or racial profiling to achieve the city’s goals.
Other council members wondered why there is such a focus on violent crime when property crimes made up a bulk of the SAPD’S reports last year.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg, on the other hand, complimented the plan, calling it a “truly whole government approach.”
“The difference-making here in terms of what we haven’t been doing before is that we’re actually using data to inform the approach,” he said.