Police say major crimes in S.A. in 2018 fell 17 percent from previous year.
McManus credits task force with ‘drastically reducing’ offenses, says ‘there is no finish line’
Major crimes in San Antonio decreased across the board last year, with rape the only exception.
The total number — 71,125 — declined 17 percent from the year prior, according to San Antonio police. That included homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny/theft and motor vehicle theft.
Those crimes, plus arson, are so-called Part I offenses, which are tracked by the FBI and considered the most serious. SAPD didn’t include arson numbers for 2018.
Police Chief William McManus credited the improvement to the department’s continued efforts to apprehend known criminals and enhance community engagement. He said 2018 was the second consecutive year of an overall decline in crime.
There were 107 homicides reported in San Antonio last year, a 16 percent reduction from the year prior. Homicides have decreased steadily since 2016, when the number reached 149, a 21-year high.
The homicide count does not include justified homicides or officer-involved killings.
The only offense that increased was rape, which has been on the rise since 2015. Last year, there were 1,346 rapes in San Antonio, a 6 percent increase from 2017.
Property crimes decreased more than violent crimes last year.
In a statement posted on Facebook, McManus said the Violent
Crime Task Force, which includes several federal, state and local agencies, has “drastically reduced crime.”
The task force was established in 2017 after homicides and violent crime skyrocketed the year before.
The spike had police officials puzzled as to the causes.
The task force focused on repeat offenders, not crime hot spots as the department had done before.
“Crime doesn’t just happen in one section of the city, and we don’t want to target one section of the city,” McManus said in 2017
when the initiative was unveiled. “We don’t want to ‘overpolice.’ We have our Intelligence Unit detectives talking about who we need to target — people, not areas.”
He said task force agencies have made 16,533 arrests, including nearly 1,500 gang members, since its inception. It has also confiscated 2,181 firearms and 839,174 grams of illegal drugs.
McManus said the decline in crime can also be credited to the work of officers in the SAFFE Unit, which works hand in hand with residents and businesses to prevent crimes.
SAFFE, which stands for San Antonio Fear Free Environment, has added officers for two consecutive years, he said.
While he is heartened by the decrease in crime, McManus said there is still much work to be done.
“While these numbers are strong, there is no finish line,” he said.