The public safety committee meeting.

Chair Larsdorf is not present.

He has a military commitment, so I will sit in on his behalf.

First item of business approval of the April 7th, 2026 meeting minutes.

Do I have a motion?

Second.

Second.

Second.

Alright.

If there are any changes, comments, or anything of that nature here and now.

Seeing none, all in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All right.

Aye.

Any in opposition?

Don't see anything in opposition, that passes.

All right.

First up, we have a crime plan update by Chief Garcia, Fort Worth PD.

Good morning, Chief.

So good morning before we begin.

Really, it's gonna be kind of the criminologist show.

I just want to thank you for the opportunity to present our crime plan.

The partnership with our criminologists.

I will say obviously no secret about it, but when I first got to the city to the east, uh I've been working with criminologists for a while.

There's other uh cities that have been working well with this crime plan.

Um one of the dynamics is as we look at the city of Fort Worth and quite frankly, every statistical category, where there'd be violent crime, whether it be murder, aggravated assault, robbery, including property crime that continues to go down in the city.

Obviously, going into the summer months, it's not the time to sit on our hands.

And so certainly working with criminologists and getting uh uh plans and programs that have shown uh to be working around the country is something that's incredibly uh important for us.

Our job ultimately is to put our officers in the best places for them to succeed.

Uh, and we were going to continue to do that uh both with internal plans and external plans, including the criminologists.

So with that, I'm gonna uh pass it over to Dr.

Mike Smith and Rob Tillier to walk us through the presentation.

Good morning and welcome, Dr.

Smith.

Morning, y'all.

It is still morning.

Yes, good morning.

You'll hang it on.

Uh I'm Mike Smith, and I'm with my colleague uh Dr.

Rob Tillier.

Uh we are professors of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio, longtime police researchers who've been working in this space for you know a long time, many years.

Um and we're grateful and uh and pleased to be partnering with your city and the Fort Worth Police Department uh on this violent crime plan uh that we're here to talk about this morning.

And so um this plan is a evidence-based uh plan that's that's comprised of three primary strategies that are designed to work together and synergistically to reduce violent street crime uh in large urban areas like Fort Worth.

Uh it has three primary strategies, as I mentioned.

The first one is a hot spots policing strategy, uh, the second one is a midterm strategy that's focused on persistent, we call them persistently violent places, um, places that um have been among your top three or four most violent places in Fort Worth for the last three to five years.

That's what that strategy is designed to address.

It's a multi-pronged strategy requires a lot of resources uh to address these highly problematic areas beyond just the police.

Uh and the third strategy is focused on people.

It's an offender focused strategy.

Um in the criminology world, we call it focused deterrence.

It's designed to help break the cycle of violence among persistently violent offenders and hopefully offer them a different path.

Um, so a little bit more detail about these strategies, particularly the hotspot strategy, uh, which is um the first the first one out of the gate and the one that is underway right now.

Um the these strategies work because of a couple of criminological facts that we would call them.

Violent crime is not um, doesn't happen everywhere.

Um, it happens in a relatively small number of places, and I'll show you some data in a minute on that.

Um, it also is not committed by most offenders, it's committed by a relatively few number of offenders, um, some of whom are persistently violent.

Um, and that third strategy that I mentioned focused deterrence is really designed to address those few individuals.

So the kind of plans that we uh are are sketched have sketched out here for you require uh careful data analysis.

Um, you're they require good data, first of all, uh, and then careful analysis, and you'll see uh what we mean in a minute.

Um, but we end up mapping crime down to very small grids in your city and get get very, very granular about where these violent crimes are happening and who's committing them.