So we're gonna go ahead and begin.

The time is now 2 24 p.m.

and public safety committee is called to order.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the role?

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez.

She might have Councilmember Castillo City, Councilmember Spears.

Chair Corps?

Here we have a quorum.

Okay, awesome.

All right.

So the first item on the agenda is um minutes from January 20th, 2026 public safety committee meeting.

Are there any adjustments that need to be made?

If not, I'll take a motion.

You know a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Okay, motion carries three-o.

All right.

So we're gonna go ahead and take items five first, which is the inwall care services metrics that we were just looking at.

The point of this is just to be able to show data on a quarterly basis for all of our public safety organizations that do work in the community.

So we just thought um we did SCPDs in a memo this form last time.

We'll do these every month with the different departments, so next month will be fire.

But for ACS, I'd just like for my colleagues to give any feedback.

John is here in case we have any um questions for him to uh to answer, but we just wanted feedback on is there a specific item with statistics that you have questions about or that you would want to do a deeper dive in for the next uh public safety meeting.

Maria, anything you want to add?

No, councilwoman.

Okay any feedback from my colleague on it?

Go ahead, Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh thank you, John, um, for your work with animal care service as well as Rita and Karen uh for serving on the board.

I did have a couple of questions in terms of the vacancies.

Uh for example, um, we see the decrease in the compliance rate due to vacancies, but we've also increased um dangerous dog investigations team from two to four.

Uh are all four of those roles currently filled, or are there uh any vacancies out of the four?

Uh no, ma'am.

The uh there's actually two vacancies of the four right now.

Um, and um that that's that's the big issue of the problem.

Not to mention that the number of dangerous cases have doubled.

So when we when we went from two officers to four officers when we initially that we only were taking were doing about 300 affidavits a year, we went from two to four to so we could cover 300, but now we're getting 600, so it's definitely impacting their ability.

And in terms of addressing those vacancies, do you all intend to hire from within the animal care service department or are you all uh currently exploring uh candidates for those vacancies?

Typically they're they're hired from within uh for the because those are lead positions and typically that it's a promotional, although I mean occasionally we do have to go outside if we don't have anyone internally that qualifies.

Yeah, and to your point, right, in terms of the the actuals from 2025 to this year, um, in terms of seeing the increase of dogs surrendered to animal care service and the increase of animals reported, uh, you all are faring pretty well in terms of increasing the live release rate, uh, ensuring that there's uh more adoptions and then of course transferring to uh rescue partners.

So just wanted to highlight those key pieces uh in terms of what to see moving forward.

I think uh in terms of helping us understand uh well one, right?

I'd like to, I'm sure we all like to see the vacancies um filled um to ensure that we're having the greatest impact.

Um, but also an understanding of the bike cases, uh how they're separate from the dangerous dog investigations and can you remind me of that split uh of the dangerous dogs investigations uh and then the bite cases as separate?

Yeah, um dangerous dogs don't necessarily involve a bite, they could just involve an attack, and if even if the person was able to defend themselves well enough where they didn't actually get bid, it could still qualify as dangerous.

So not every bike ends up at dangerous.

The other thing is there's there's eight officers that buy officers that will initially work the by call if the bye meets the definition of a dangerous, then that person is offered an affidavit to then to move forward with dangerous at that point.

So it starts off with our bite officers most of the time, and then get switched to the dangerous team if they file the affidavit.

I believe it's like a 94%.

Uh and I can't imagine with those new officers out on the field, right, to see that number continue to increase again, as you mentioned, seeing an increase uh in calls for need of supportive animal care service.

So just uh thank you and your team for all the work you are doing, and I look forward to receiving these updates.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilman Castillo.

And I realized um we had a public comment signed up for this item, so I'm gonna allow her to speak first, and then we can go to Councilmember McKee Riggers if he has anything.

Vicki Steerman, are you here?

I thought I saw her.

Vicki, would you like to come up?

And there are two other individuals who are alone.

Are they signed up as well?

Yes.

Could you give me their names?

It's okay, we'll give you and so we'll give you go ahead and give you nine minutes, Vicky.

Okay, and uh also is there any way we can get this picture I brought put up on the screen.

No, we don't have dogs.

Okay, sorry, that's that's fine.

Chico, abuse, neglect, and the ACS strategic plan.

On February 20th of 2025, I pulled a dog, Chico, from San Antonio Animal Care Services.

He was emaciated, had damaged eyes, and was surrendered to ACS by his owner.

I specifically pulled this dog to follow progress on an example of a dog that had been abused and neglected.

After almost one year, and it has been a year now, this dog was surrendered a year ago yesterday.

Yesterday.

Um ACS having this case, it is my contention that nothing of consequence has been achieved in holding the former owner accountable.

My purpose in following this case was not just to get justice for Chico, but to determine if ACS has made any progress towards uh achievement of any of the focus areas goals and objectives identified in the 2023 strategic plan.

A plan that was the product of citizen and stakeholder input, and that I believe if followed and implemented would help this city solve one of its most apparent ignored problems.

I certainly believe that this plan's objectives concerning abuse and neglect are not being met.

I have had numerous meetings with Director Jonathan Gary and Brad Davenport, and email correspondence with the investigator assigned to Chico's case, where I have mentioned Chico's case and have contacted uh asked for status updates.

The last time I contacted the investigator in the case to ask for a status update, I was told I should submit an open records request.

I did in fact submit an open records request in March of 2025.

I believe I received 12 days pages, of which 10 pages were totally redacted.

I will not submit another ORR or only to receive no useful information.

I provided to the investigator all of the information I have received from my veterinarian's office, Callahan Road Animal Hospital, and South Texas veterinary ophthalmology.

I had tests run at Callahan to determine if there were any underlying issues that could have caused the severe emaciated condition that Chico was surrendered in.

There were no such findings of underlying conditions.

It will be a year next week, actually, it'll be a year on the 20th, which is probably Friday, I don't know, since Chico was surrendered.

Um, it was actually the 16th.

I'm sorry, it was a year ago that I received Chico that I picked him up.

I was told it takes eight months for these cases to be referred to be adjudicated.

I've been very patient.

I will no longer be patient.

My takeaways from this experience is that abuse and neglect in San Antonio of companion animals is not taken seriously.

That efforts to help were not appreciated, and that this city continues to ignore this problem.

I want to know what it will take to implement the ACS strategic plan.

I would like to know why we continue to allow errant owners to abuse and neglect their animals with no repercussions.

Further, as I have stated before, I contend that this city creates dangerous dogs by ignoring and allowing bad actors to continue to abuse, neglect, abandon, and allow their dogs to wander our streets free of restraint.

What do I want?

I want these cases investigated and moved to proper authorities to be adjudicated in a timely manner.

After discussing the process with ACS on how these cases are handled, I would like for the process to be reviewed for efficiency.

I want the city to acknowledge that we have a problem.

I want the taxes I've paid as a citizen and property holder for the production of the ACS strategic plan to be used to implement it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vicki.

Um, Councilmember McKee Jiggas, did you have anything on the ACS item?

No, nothing right now, thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

All right, I'll just um end by saying thank you for sharing this data.

It that the one thing that I've seen, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is like personnel is a huge component of everything we do at ACS.

And I know it takes time to train up officers, so I'm glad Councilman Castillo got to see the class of folks that just graduated, but I would like to better understand maybe that the challenge in personnel issues that you have.

So maybe a deep dive in just like where you for the next session, and we can talk about this and iterate about where you find gaps, how long you find them, and if there are any things that other folks around are doing to help incentivize those positions, um, and just what ways that we might be able to support as we go into potentially the budget cycle to determine how best to support you all, if that is incentives or assigning bonus or something like that.

Whatever we can do to get creative on getting folks into the positions that we need them in.

And I say all that to say that like the 600 calls is awesome.

That means folks are actually taking action.

And I don't necessarily know that all of a sudden those it's doubled, but that means that people are saying, okay, we can call them and they'll do something about it.

And so um we want those numbers to keep going up.

We just want to be able to address them and accurately inventory them.

So maybe that could be a potential follow-up.

All right, thank you so much.

We'll move back.

We'll move on to item four if that's okay, since we have folks to sign up to speak, and then we'll go up to one and two.

Uh, is there any uh opposition to that?

All right.

So we're gonna uh move to item four, which is a council consideration request from councilwoman Castillo, and I believe there is a presentation for this.

Yes, Chairwoman, we have um Jessica Dovalino with our human services department who's gonna give us an overview of the CCR.

Thank you, Marianne, committee members.

I'm a little too short.

Um, so thank you again for allowing me to present today.

Uh today, as mentioned, I'm presenting on a council consideration request by filed by council member Castillo related to enhancing senior protection strategies.

And I will also be providing an overview of existing programs and resources that we're enhancing to partially meet some of the recommendations from that CCR.

I do want to acknowledge that I'm joined today by Melody Woosley, Human Services Director, and Victor Obavan, our senior services administrator, as well as some community partners that are joining us today that are also integral to this work.

Uh that includes Fernanda Gardenas, Chair of our Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs, Joanne Tobias Molina, who's also with our City County Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs, Daryl Oates, who's sorry, Darrell Greer, who's representing Oates, and then we're also joined by Barbara Whithow, formerly chair of the City County Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs, who's now with AARP.

Specifically during today's presentation, I'm gonna provide a demographic snapshot of older adults in Bear County, specifically as it relates to this issue.

We'll review the city council uh consideration request.

We'll also talk about risk and protective factors, and provide an update on the status of older adults report that was requested by this committee as part of our next steps.

We'll talk about how we're enhancing our current practices, both based on the CCR and also prior recommendations from this committee as well as the subcommittee, and then we'll also review recommended next steps.

So, just for context, in um September of 2025, we'd come to you previously and shared information for fiscal year 2024 on the rate of adult protective services investigations in Bear County.

Updated data for fiscal year 2025 continues to show that Bear County is actually leading in large counties in the state of Texas in terms of the rate of investigations per thousand um older adults at a rate of 17.5.

What's even more surprising and startling is that of the investigations, 92% were identified as self-neglect, which is an issue that we haven't necessarily explored in depth as part of this discussion, and something that we do want to highlight.

Of those cases, 81% were physical neglect, and 19% were medical neglect.

And so that is something that we continue to see at our senior centers as well as something that our providers continually lift up as part of the discussions about what's happening in our community.

Given the high rate of self-neglect, as well as um poverty in our community, which also has increased, um, those are important factors.

So right now we're showing a 13.8% 13.1% rather poverty rate for older adults in Bear County, those 65 years of age and older.

Overall poverty rates in our community have moderately declined, but this particular age group has seen a significant increase since the last time that we looked at the data for the period of 2015 to 2019 of about 1.6%.

So given all of those factors, the city of San Antonio through many departments, including DHS, police, library, parks and recreation, development services, and the health department provide programming for older adults to help address issues and try to build those protective factors.

Through DHS alone, we serve a little over 22,000 active older adult participants who are coming to our senior centers regularly.

There, we're addressing things like social isolation, food insecurity, access to preventative screenings for medical care, as well as caregiver training and resources, and benefits navigation and financial counseling.

One of the things that the councilwoman CCR highlighted and that we know is that older adult abuse is often unreported.

And so, because of that, we also focused on not only providing training for city employees, but this year we're also expanding that for our community partners and those that are volunteering at our senior centers.

And I do want to again acknowledge, and you can see that by some of the representatives that are joined with us today to talk about this item, that we're not doing this work alone.

So we're not only working with multiple city departments, but we're also working with many external stakeholders.

Those include law enforcement, adult protective services, Bear County, most recently through the Senior Justice Assessment Center that they've established, nonprofit partners, and other community stakeholders.

In terms of the council consideration requests, the council member filed this on December 5th, and it really is requesting that we look at enhancing protection for seniors as well as creating additional opportunities for increased education and awareness.

The CCR was presented to the governance committee on January 21st, in which staff provided some recommended next steps.

The governance committee did approve staff's recommendation to bring this item back to the public safety committee for further discussion and to look at opportunities to incorporate that incorporate that into the existing work of the committee and the subcommittee.

One thing that we do want to highlight is that the council consideration request, as well as prior guidance provided by Public Safety Committee and the subcommittee recommendations, actually work to enhance protective factors for older adults.

Some of those protective risk factors include education and training for older adults, caregivers, and the larger community, building strong social networks for older adults as well as their caregivers, supporting caregivers, and we're talking about respite, we're talking about financial resources and training, also promoting financial independence and asset protection for older adults to safeguard against those scams, and when seniors are actually victims of those scams, we're able to help them quickly recover and regain assets where possible, and then also encouraging community awareness and reporting.

In terms of the direction provided by the Public Safety Committee and the Elder Abuse Subcommittee, we also wanted to provide an update on our work on the status of older adults in San Antonio report.

So we have been working with a local researcher to conduct that study.

We anticipate that that work will begin in earnest in March, and the study will be completed in August of 2026.

The report will specifically review data related to systems gaps that help to increase the likelihood that older adults are victims of fraud, neglect, abuse, and exploitation.

But as this committee pointed out, and as we see from the data, it's also important that we look at larger system issues that older adults are facing.

Those are things like community and health care issues, housing insecurity, food insecurity, social isolation, transportation, and many others.

The final report is anticipated to be presented to the public safety committee for review and recommendations, and based on direction provided by the public safety committee, we know that that also will include referrals to other city council committees based upon the findings for them to review and also provide their recommendations.

Within existing resources, we are enhancing current practices to align with the CCR and also based on this committee's direction.

For human services, those practices fall with really within three primary recommendation areas.

The first is education and awareness.

And we've previously talked about the don't look away training that we launched citywide.

That's actually serving as a model for APS and other cities as they look at how they can coordinate to also increase awareness in their communities.

And it's something that we are launching with community partners as well as internal volunteers of our senior centers and others that may be interested in that training to include council offices.

We are also looking at how do we increase and leverage additional resources to expand training that we're providing at the senior centers and in the community to older adults and caregivers, as well as enhancing the work that we're doing on social media and through other marketing campaigns to increase general awareness in the community.

We are also continuing our benefits navigation and financial counseling work that's provided through our senior centers and our financial empowerment centers.

We've had some additional resources that have come to us for the city from the cities for financial empowerment, including some will planning programs as well as other legacy planning resources that we're bringing to the senior centers.

And lastly, we're also looking and continuing multidisciplinary collaboration, not only as I mentioned with City of San Antonio departments, but also with external partners.

Plan next steps related to the CCR and the recommendations from this committee include development of requested resource guides by May of 2026.

So that's a tailored cell phone user guide that we're going to be working with our technology and education partners to develop, as well as the senior rights and resources guide.

Those guides will be provided in multiple languages so that we're ensuring that those in our community can access and use them.

We are also reviewing the no solicitation ordinance and code with development services and the city attorney's office.

We anticipate that recommendations from that review will come back in September of 2026.

In the interim, we're going to be printing and providing printable door and yard signs so that we can not only provide them through the senior centers, but others in the community can also access and print them.

We are developing and distributing public service announcements beginning in March.

We'll leverage those that are created in the community.

For example, Gonzaba recently created one with adult protective services, and so we'll widely share that as well as producing and developing and announcing our own public service announcements.

We are also working on federal and legislative advocacy.

That's in coordination with our government affairs department, but also working with other groups, including the Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs, our external external partners and stakeholders, including the Successfully Aging and Living in San Antonio Coalition, as well as the Civil Heard Legislators and many others.

We are also going to be coordinating and promoting resources and tools in a broader and more enhanced way during Elder Abuse Awareness Month in June.

We'll be assessing resources needed to expand services beyond our senior centers.

We anticipate to complete that review also in June of 2026.

And then, as previously mentioned, we'll bring the status of older adults in San Antonio report back to public safety for review.

And we anticipate that there may be some additional recommendations from that report.

So that does conclude the presentation.

We're happy to answer any questions you might have about the presentation, programming, andor next steps.

Thank you so much for the presentation, Ms.

All right.

We have a few people signed up to speak, so we'll go to them first.

First up is Joanne Tobias Molina, my proud representative for District One on the Commission.

Thank you.

Another short person.

Thank you so much, Councilwoman.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and thank you, Council to Ms.

Delvellina for the opportunity and the presentation.

My name is Joanne Tobias Molina, and I am an older adult, and I'm a resident of District One.

I am a volunteer member of the Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs.

Prior to my current career, I was an employee of adult protective services for over 30 years.

And in those 30 years, I saw firsthand the impact of elder abuse and neglect in our community.

There are so many horrific stories that you will not believe, and our law our first responders can attest to that, that it is a crime that is happening behind closed doors.

It is often very silent and goes without notice because the older adult might be isolated and may not have a support system in mind, and or someone who is aware of what's happening to them.

I fully support the programming that is offered by Ms.

Dovellina and the program and under item number four.

As many of the researchers and experts will tell you, most of the elder abuse is usually co-occurring with forms of neglect.

And it can be primarily in Bear County and most of the state.

It will be issues of self-neglect, where the person is no longer physically able to bathe, dress, cook, clean, and maintain themselves in their own home.

What I think all older adults want to do is to be able to safely age in place.

And because of that, we need to be informed and reaching out to other partners to develop more collaboration about how can we safely age in place.

In addition, across the country, approximately 22 million people are living what we call solo agers.

These are individuals who are not in a partnered relationship, may not have children, or family members that are available to them.

So what happens as a solo ager when you are needing someone to help you get to the doctor's office or have a procedure done?

What happens is sometimes you just don't get it done.

And sometimes you go without.

So what happens then is it's an impact in our services when you have the high utilizers who may call a 911 because they need someone to hum and pick them up off the floor and help them, or they don't have someone to stay with them.

So I think the issue of elder abuse and elder maltreatment is certainly something that I appreciate that the council is looking for and offering opportunities to grow programming and develop new opportunities.

And I would concur that we need to be inclusive and consider the issues of elder neglect and self-neglect primarily.

So thank you for the opportunity, and we appreciate everything you're doing on our behalf.

Thank you.

Past representative for District One, Barbara Whithowell.

Thank you.

And my name is Barbara Whitt Howell.

And uh I am here from AA and I'm here for AARP's associate San Antonio's Associate State Director, Ismael Edera, who is unable to be here today.

AARP empowers people to choose how they live as they age and for adults 50 plus safety is essential to this mission.

We are uh we appreciate and support the city's focus on enhanced enhancing protections for older adults and strengthening the programs and resources that support them, especially as abuse and fraud continue to rise.

Thank you for considering the needs of San Antonio's older residents.

Thank you, Barbara.

Fernanda Gardenas.

Good afternoon.

Um, my name is Fernanda Cartanas, and on behalf of the Gosawa Foundation and as chair of the Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs and as a board member of the South Texas Adult Protective Services, I write to express strong support for their proposed council consideration request to enhance protection for older adults in the city of San Antonio.

San Antonio's senior population continues to grow at a rapid age, bringing it with both opportunities and responsibilities.

As more residents age into retirement, too many remain vulnerable to financial exploitation, fraud, neglect, and abuse.

These incidents often go unreported, leaving older adults isolated and without access to the protection and resources they deserve.

Strengthening safeguards and expanding education awareness efforts is essential to ensuring that our older residents can age with dignity, safety, and financial security.

The proposed CCR outlines a thoughtful and comprehensive approach that includes expanding access to legal assistance, strengthening local ordinances related to solicitation, improving coordination with financial institutions, law enforcements, increasing education and outreach efforts.

These strategies reflect best practices and demonstrate a proactive commitment to prevention, early intervention, and community-wide collaboration.

Equally important are the proposed education and awareness initiatives, which will help older adults and their families work recognize the warning signs of scams, exploitation, and understand their rights and access to trusted resources.

Partnerships with health care providers, community centers, city departments, and the senior justice assessment center will help ensure that information reaches older adults where they already live, gather, and receive services.

The City and County Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs, the Gonzava Foundation, and the South Texas Adult Protective Services are dedicated to improving the quality of life of our older adults in San Antonio.

We believe this CCR represents an important step towards building a safer and more supportive environment for our aging population.

We stand ready to collaborate with city and community partners to support these efforts.

Thank you for your continued leadership and commitment to protecting our older adults in the community.

Thank you for Nana.

Thank you for everything because I'm a fan issue strength for our elders too.

Darrell Greer.

All right.

Good afternoon, Chairwoman, Dr.

Kor and Committee members.

My name is Darrell Greer, and I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the CCR by Councilwoman Castillo.

As an employee of votes from AARP, our organization is dedicated to empowering older adults through the safe use of technology.

We strongly endorse this proposed CCR that enhances the protection of older adults in San Antonio.

The data provided regarding Bear County, specifically the 1,120 allegations of exploitation in 2024 is just the tip of the iceberg.

In our daily work in San Antonio, we see firsthand how isolation and the lack of confidence make seniors prime targets for online and in-person scammers.

While the senior population in San Antonio is expected to grow by 40% in 2040, it's a moral and economic priority that the City of San Antonio prioritizes the digital and physical safety of older adults.

We applaud the proposal's focus on proactive defensive measures, such as the auto-enrolling of the do not call registry, providing mobile phone guides to ward off scam calls, and the proposed updates to the door-to-door solicitation, including restricted hours and visible identification badges.

Many seniors own smartphones with robust security features, but often lack the specific training to enable them.

By integrating these services into the senior centers and to the 311 system, the city can provide immediate systemic reductions to entry points available by scammers.

As a South Texas Adult Protective Service Community Board member, we hear the stories of seniors frequently not reporting fraud and abuse due to the embarrassment and the reporting of fraud and abuse.

The establishment of a local hotline and the distribution of multilingual educational resources are a central step towards demystifying the reporting process and removing the stigma associated by being a victim.

By partnering with financial institutions and the FBI to flag suspicious transaction, the city can hopefully reduce the 1.3 billion dollars that was stolen from Texas in 2024, and that was also reported by the FBI's IC3 report.

Ultimately, protecting older adults as financial security is a community-wide responsibility.

And we urge the public safety community committee to support this item.

Oates and the South Texas APS Community Board stand ready to partner with the city to develop these recommendations.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Darrell.

All right.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Jesse, for the presentation, as well as Fernanda, Darrell, and so many of the uh folks who gave public comment, but particularly the Joint Commission of Elder Affairs for y'all's continued work on ensuring that we continue to provide uh resources and protections to San Antonio's senior population.

Uh this was a council consideration request that was born out of a trend that we had seen in District 5, and Christine on our constituent services team had highlighted that there are many residents calling our office in need of assistance because they had fallen victim to door-to-door solicitors who were taking advantage of them.

Uh they're going uh under the guise of being part of CPS Energy or a trustworthy solar company, and essentially were signing on to $95,000 loans, uh, which then would result in a lien on their property, and then oftentimes solar panels that were not even connected.

Uh, one instance in which um the house was um crumbling because the weight of the solar panels that were placed and not even attached, um the structure couldn't sustain the weight of the solar panels.

Um, so just wanted to highlight that that trend uh is something that I know is not unique to District 5.

Um, but what was also alarming was when Chief Salame gave a presentation on senior statistics, uh we saw the high amount of individuals, seniors in particular, that are victims of uh fraud and financial exploitation.

And Chief had also mentioned that those numbers were likely underreported because oftentimes it's someone in the household who's uh maybe committing the fraud, and as Darrell mentioned, right, there's that embarrassment.

Uh and by working collaboratively with partners, senior centers, so on and so forth, uh, there's that safe space that many of our seniors have found where they do make reports uh and do share information about exploitation or things that may be going on at home.

Um, so I'm pleased to see that um staff's recommendation in terms of teasing out what additional uh resources and protections can look like.

Uh in terms of the no solicitation ordinance, I'm pleased to see that um some signage and resources will already be ready for folks to access.

Um, but in terms of the update, um, with the proposed timeline from March to September, I believe there would be value if we could receive an update between March and September in terms of how things are moving along, uh, what way can our partners, whether it's uh Guanzaba and AARP can continue to give input uh on what that work looks like and how we could continue to collaborate on connecting with seniors to ensure that they know what's being developed and then ultimately what's approved by council.

Um in terms of the resource guides, I'm pleased to see that that's something that's going to be moving along as well.

Uh, because uh I I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but another trend is right, those spam calls and texts that folks are responding to, clicking the link, and it's taking all their information.

Um, and we're seeing folks lose a lot of their savings uh in that manner.

So just pleased to see with the recommendations.

I'm eager to see the status of older adults report in terms of the systems gap, but I'm assuming there's going to be a lot of correlation with the same zip codes that we see in terms of housing insecurity, rental costs, uh poverty, so on and so forth.

So looking forward to seeing that report.

Um, but just wanted to highlight the urgency of these initiatives.

Uh again, when she presented those stats, it was alarming, and it was something that we hear in community.

So I'm glad to see that the timeline uh is as to move along in terms of June for the elder abuse awareness month coordination, developing the metrics and cost estimates needed to expand services uh beyond the community centers.

Um my ask chair is that in terms of as these pieces are being developed, if we could have a full committee discussion in terms of giving input and direction on what's being developed.

And those are all my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Castillo.

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez.

No, thank you.

Thank you for everybody who came out to speak.

And thanks for the update.

Thank you.

Um, I'll just end by echoing what Councilman Castillo said.

I actually would really like to the next time the marketing campaign is built or metrics are set for us to get a feedback to be able to provide feedback on that.

Um, I'm just so curious.

Like, is social media really the right strategy for this?

So transparently, this is not an area of expertise, but I know we have lots of folks in the room that are, so would love to see as different types of as the metrics are being built if we could get an update on that, even if it's in a memo that we can then provide public comment on or comment publicly in our our committee meeting.

Um in addition with the resource guides, obviously, you guys already do this, but partnering with our offices to make sure we have both copies to be able to disseminate, yard signs to be able to disseminate for folks so that when we do have our events or when we do get calls, we can also distribute that.

And that and you guys do a great job of that, so I'm sure that would happen anyways.

Um just a quick thing, and Joanne and I Joanne actually made this request.

How do we change the name of this joint commission?

Because I know folks have asked to for it to not be called elder affairs but older adults.

So we would actually have to go both before city council to get that approved and um the commissioner's court.

It is something that we've started conversations with the joint commission on as well as looking at their bylaws.

There's a desire to update those as well.

So we're working with the executive committee in particular, and then the full joint commission to start those conversations.

Okay.

I would support that effort.

Um, I don't know if my council colleagues would too.

It seems like so.

So maybe we can move that along, and um I'm sure Commissioner's court would be um would be supportive of that too.

Uh sometime I mean, words do matter, so we want to make sure that they they feel represented by the title of their commission.

Um, and then lastly, I'm uh grateful that you guys are doing the don't look away training.

I know Daryl mentioned it too, and we that more folks need to be um aware of what those signs are and how to best help all of our members.

I just want to thank you to the partners that are here.

I feel like these organizations do such a good job of partnering with our districts and events.

We just had an AARP event.

We always do stuff with Gonzaba, we do stuff with Oaths.

So you guys just do such a great job of supporting our residents, and we're grateful for you.

Um so we'll look forward to bringing this item back when there's some updates.

All right, awesome.

Thank you all.

We'll move on to item number one, which is an update on the quality.

Oh, we're gonna do two.

You want to do two first?

So one last thing.

Oh sorry.

Uh, item number two, excuse me, um, which is the uh council consideration request on the quality of life CCR.

Yes, and um chairwoman and committee members.

So this is to give you an update on this particular CCR.

We made a presentation to the committee back in November, and since we've done um a lot of analysis about what potential options this committee could discuss today.

So Justina Tate will be making that presentation, and then what we're gonna be asking the committee is to give us to give us your input on some of the options that we have.

We're not making recommendations at this presentation, and then we'll come back with uh whatever this committee decides that that they would like for us to explore further.

Thanks, Maria.

And Councilmember McKee Rodriguez, I apologize for the length of this presentation that was on me.

I kept asking them to add slides, but to that point, Justina, you don't feel free to go at a good pace.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much uh for having me.

My name is Justina Tate.

I'm the interim assistant city manager for the city of San Antonio.

As Maria mentioned, we will be presenting on the council of consideration request on enhanced response of quality of life concerns.

And in this presentation today, I'll go over the analysis that we did in terms of the calls that were received by SAPD for minor traffic accidents, loss and stolen property, loud music and parking and found property.

And then finally, we'll provide an overview of potential alternative response options to these calls.

Quickly on the background.

So this CCR was submitted by Councilmember Core in February of 2025 and requested the city manager to evaluate options accounting for existing collective bargaining agreement and other considerations to determine the feasibility of the following.

Creating a cash, a crash investigator technician role that could be filled by potentially a retired SAPD officer or civilian employee within the city of San Antonio to support addressing and reporting for low priority calls, including certain traffic accidents, found property, lost or stolen property, parking and noise enforcement.

And then two, explore the use of technology to allow the community to report low-level offenses that do not necessitate the presence of a police officer or civilian employee.

This CCR was presented to the governance committee on April 2025, and the initial presentation to the public safety committee was presented on November of 2025.

This next slide provides an overview of the average number of calls that SAPD responds to on a yearly basis, and also particularly looks at the calls that could be eligible for an alternate response.

So there are about 2.1 million calls on average that are received via our public safety answering report, uh public safety answering point.

Of that, 1.8 million is dispatched.

So based on the analysis that we did looking at the types of calls that we receive, we identified that 177,000 calls are within the scope of the CCR request.

So looking at minor traffic accidents, loud music disturbance calls, stolen and lost property, as well as found property.

So within that 177,000, about of those calls, a police offer a police officer responded to 107,000 of those calls.

The remainder of the calls were addressed either by expeditors or the call was canceled.

Looking at the 107,000, we identified that 69,000 calls could be eligible for an alternate response based on the analysis that we completed.

So in the next couple slides, I'll go through each one of these categories, starting off with our minor traffic accidents.

As I noted on the previous slide, SAPD responds on average to almost 69,000 minor traffic accidents per year.

Now per state law, if an officer is investigating a vehicle collision, a written report must be made if there is an injury, a death, or the perceived damage of property is at a thousand dollars or more.

So based on this state law, we analyzed the calls and found those calls where there were no there was no crime involved, no hit and run, no injuries, no tow was needed, and both drivers had insurance.

So these we identified as those calls that could be eligible for an alternate response.

So of the 68,000, we identified over 31,000 that could be that could be eligible for an alternate response, or 46% of these calls.

Now to provide some context for these calls, a caller's wait time for in 2025 for a minor traffic accident was about 32.5 minutes or just over half an hour.

And this is measured from the time a call is made to when an officer responds on on scene.

So on the graph, the bar that is colored in teal, those are the number of minor accident calls that are received by SAPD.

The orange line shows the average wait time.

So as you can see from the from the graph, the longest time that a caller would wait on average is between 1 p.m.

and 2 p.m.

and 9 p.m.

and 10 p.m.

So these wait times are about 46 minutes to 48 minutes during these uh during these peak hours.

This next slide provides an overview of how other cities are using alternate response methods for minor traffic accidents.

So these include or other response methods include deploying retired officers, deploying civilians, diverting the caller to a police station to make a report, a police substation to make a report, online reporting, and over the phone reporting.

Now of the cities, there are four cities that deploy retired traffic officers, and that includes three cities that use a contractor to provide these services.

One thing I do want to note is that the city of Dallas has released an RFP that is seeking non-sworn personnel to provide these services as well.

The next categories are lost and stolen property.

SAPD receives over 36,000 calls for lost and stolen property on average in a year.

Now this is one area where we do use an alternative method.

As you can see from the slide, almost 25,000 of these calls are handled by expeditors, and about 11,500 are handled by our police officers.

I do want to note that 60% of the lost property and 31% of stolen property calls involve either a wallet, a lost wallet or stolen wallet, or an ID.

Now the 11,500 calls that our police officers are responding to currently could be eligible for potential alternate response.

On these calls, a caller's wait time averaged about 39 minutes in 2025, and the officer's time on the call averaged about 58 minutes.

And this equates to approximately seven police officers to handle these calls each year.

This includes either referring referring the call to civilian or light duty officer, deploying a civilian to investigate the call, or online self-reporting.

The next category is our loud our loud music and parking.

In this category, police officers responded to almost 21,000 loud music calls on average in an in a year.

For loud music calls, a caller's wait time averages about 24 minutes, and an officer's time on call average about 19 minutes.

So this equates to approximately four police officers needed to respond to these types of calls.

I do want to note that in terms of in terms of case cases of loud music, an officer typically gains compliance from the residents by issuing warnings which results which results in a low citation rate for these types of calls.

Now this next slide illustrates the time of day when loud music calls are received and the time of day when parking citations are issued.

So the teal bar reflects the number of loud noise calls that were received, and the orange bar or the red bar indicates the parking citations.

As you can see from the chart, most loud music calls and parking citations are received between 10 p.m.

and 6 a.m.

And this reflects about or this represents about 63% of those calls that are received during that time.

So based on this analysis, the loud music calls, about 70% were received between Thursday night and Monday morning.

Sundays being the most at 30% of that of those calls.

For parking violation, we also saw that most of the citations, I'm sorry, parking citations, most of those citations were issued between Thursday night and Monday morning, with Saturdays having the highest number of parking citations issued.

When we looked at how other cities responded to noise and parking, we did find for that for the most part the cities that we surveyed, police do respond to noise and a civilian department responds to parking.

I do want to note that that Dallas has implemented a program where both police and civilians respond to loud music or loud noise calls.

So the police department responds to 911 calls and when they identify that there is a repeat offender or chronic offender, they will send their night enforcement team to those areas where they see chronic chronic disturbances, chronic calls to begin addressing that through those civilian teams.

Finally we looked at found property police officers respond to over 62 calls a year on average and found property can range from weapons to narcotics to bags or wallets.

Most of these items or the the items that are surrendered to SAPD are treated as potential evidence.

And SAPD follows certain protocols that determines where and how various items can be stored.

But based on the analysis that we did we identified that just under 5,000 calls could be eligible for potential alternative response.

So this is anything but weapons and narcotics which would need to be continued to be addressed by SAPD.

Responding to these 5,000 calls is equivalent to about 2.9 officers on an annual basis.

And this is on scene services.

On scene services specifically seeks out retired police officers when hiring their crash response agents these hiring managers typically ask the chief of police which recent retirees they should hire and they benefit this the benefits of this includes familiarity responding to minor accidents these civilians are trained in de-escalation techniques and they're also familiar with documenting documentation process for minor accidents.

As you can see from the slide they are currently working with three different cities the city of New Orleans Louisiana the city of Baltimore Maryland and the city of St.

George Louisiana so this next slide presents potential alternative alternate response options for the different calls that we've analyzed that we'd like that we are seeking input from the public safety committee on today so we've identified about several options that to be discussed to include deploying retired SAP officers deploying or deploying a contractor using a contractor using expediters or civilians online self-reporting using code enforcement officers as well as crime scene investigators for found property and the potentially potential use of virtual officers to address minor traffic accidents.

Now I do want to note the items in blue or the teal color these are calls or alternate response options that would require a change to the collective bargaining agreement.

That concludes my presentation and we'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you Justina for that presentation you did a great job with that.

I'll start off by just saying the goal and intent of the CCR because I was asked that question and I think that's important to share is one as you'll see on the backup slide number 19 if we can help take off some of the stuff off our officers plate that's 31 officers that could be on our streets doing patrol in our areas that need support maybe adding to the safe officer team those that time could be reallocated to issues that we know we really need support with in our community so that's the primary intent but the secondary is that while we do while that could be beneficial we can't decrease the quality of service that right now folks are receiving in the sense that if someone wants an individual who is an officer to show up and request that they should be able to receive that support as well I want to thank the city staff for working with me to help show this information because I think it's an important conversation to really understand what are the priorities of this committee and of council at large and how can we make sure our dollars are being spent where they're most needed obviously we know there's negotiations that are ongoing so this was also why we wanted to have this conversation now in case any of that were to influence what you all are doing at the table.

I want to thank the city staff for working with me to help show this information because I think it's an important conversation to really understand what are the priorities of this committee and of council at large and how can we make sure our dollars are being spent where they're most needed.

Obviously, we know there's negotiations that are ongoing.

So this was also why we wanted to have this conversation now, in case any of that were to influence what you all are doing at the table.

I want to thank the SAPOA and SAPD for being here and for your support and for allowing us to have this conversation and working with us as we discuss it.

The one thing that I think that is most important, and I know there are folks from OSS here.

I'm just gonna give you guys an opportunity if you want to say anything, and I think if there's any other okay.

All right, so um I think what I would at least like to understand better is what the costs are for San Antonio with each of these options.

And I think we might end up with a multi-pronged approach where there is an option for folks who feel comfortable virtually logging their accident and being able to take that on versus someone who really wants a retired officer or a contractor to or not a retired or a retired officer or a current SAPD officer to come to the scene.

There has to be options that we can create, and maybe we even try a pilot of some sort.

But I would like us to consider doing an RFP to see what the cost for San Antonio would be.

Because obviously there is no reason to do this if it's going to cost more per call than it would to cost our officer cost for our officers to go out and address that.

I don't know that that would make sense.

Um but at the same time, if there is an opportunity to get a better response rate for some of the things that they just don't have the ability to do.

Because the last goal that we had for the CCR was also that we get calls from neighborhoods all the time about issues that officers just simply cannot get to.

And if you go to the heat map for noise and parking, you'll see on slide 20, it's a backup slide.

It is very heavy in D1 and downtown.

Um, those hot spots are where we get our our complaints from from our neighborhoods and our residents that they want support in.

And so if there is a way to add additional support to either civilian or looking at that chart of how parking is really led by civilians in a lot of other cities, how can we make it so that SAPD doesn't have to stop what they're doing at 11 p.m.

on a Saturday to go tow a car or write a certation in front of someone's house because they blocked their driveway.

Uh or we passed that 18-wheeler ordinance, and that was another one that we get a lot of calls on for is how do we actually ticket and enforce that.

So enforcement for this.

And I just wanted to echo that these calls, they're not there's not a call number that actually is associated because they're marked in this miscellaneous category.

So, you know, even doing some more diligence around how do we go back and really figure out these are the citations that were given, but how many times was someone actually calling in about these issues?

So those are the things that I have.

Um, I know Maria, you were gonna make a comment um just now, or we pulled your mic.

Did you want to respond?

Okay.

All right, so I think my request as the next step would be like let's accurately cost out um what each of these things would look like, and then figure out what the best um solution would be.

And in addition, I was thinking I'm just gonna uh softly poll my residents to see how they would feel about a virtual option for a traffic incident or a retired officer to see if they have a preference.

Um, it's from what I feel there's some of our, we just talked about our older adults would want a life, would want a person to come and help support them.

But I'd like to at least do some more community polling and information about this too of what they would see.

The thing I know for sure is folks have really requested more enforcement on music and parking.

I'm also curious about the night information, the night team or night entertainment team that is being used in other cities.

I um would be curious to see what investment in that something like that looks like.

I feel like our St.

Mary's task force is kind of like a small version of that.

Um, and they've been super helpful and super informative.

And the best thing about them, because they're in that area is they've built relationships with people.

So now they know okay, who to talk to, what to say, and it's actually that those officers are really great.

And so um it might be something that like where they if there is a code officer or someone in support with them because we did have an issue with food trucks not being um correctly licensed there, and that's not something that they do.

So a combo team to me uh seemingly makes sense, but I also know that's additional resources and a time where it we are very tricky and additional resources right now.

Um I'll pause there and we'll hand it over to my council colleagues.

Councilwoman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

Um of course, reducing response time for minor traffic accidents, loud music and parking is a priority for us.

This is often a trend and concern within the Lone Star uh community, and uh, you know, I think it's something that we should be working towards uh finding an issue, uh rather a resolution for.

So I just wanted to commend the chair for her creativity on uh what this could look like in terms of addressing this primary concern.

Uh uh uh an area in which I I'm I'm I want to navigate with caution is the third-party vendor component.

Uh my my concern is potentially privatizing a resource that our residents expect a city employee be responsive for.

I think there's an expectation from community that uh it's a code compliance officer or police officer, because I think that also comes with some layer of accountability, right, for the resident or the individual requesting a service.

Um I I I so I would be hesitant in terms of the the third party vendor, and I understand that they are retired police officers, and you know, if they're SAPD, that means they have uh great training.

Um, but I think in terms of if it's a minor accident, um, I think the public has an expectation that it is a city employee.

Uh, in terms of the virtual officer, is what what do you envision for that?

Is it similar to the EMS response where it's it's virtual and EMS walks them through what next steps are?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay, that's cool.

Yeah, I I think that's something worth exploring.

Uh and also continuing to see where can cold compliance provide additional support, right?

I think for loud music in particular, for some of these instances, they can escalate uh in terms of if it's a party or what's going on, right?

And I think uh having a police officer or cold compliance officer uh warrants compliance, right?

Uh, versus a third party.

Uh and I also have some concerns in terms of with these incidences or examples of third parties.

Are they armed?

Uh, what if there is an escalation?

What does that look like?

If there is escalation, who's liable in terms of if there's an incident where there's a shooting?

Would that be the city or the third-party vendor?

Uh, is that research that we've already conducted?

Um, councilwoman, we can put that on a follow-up memo.

Sure, answer is no, we haven't done that legal analysis, but we can um look at the contracts that we have been able to um get access to and provide that information.

I think that'd be helpful in terms of of what I would feel comfortable giving direction on in terms of the options laid out.

But again, wanted to commend the councilman for identifying uh the ways in which we could reduce response times and uh most importantly uh potentially hire more safe officers.

So thank you, chairwoman.

Thank you.

Thank you for those comments.

And just as a clarification, is a retired, and this is I don't know the answer to this retired police officer.

Is that a sworn officer?

Well, they would still have to have a license with the state to carry a uh weapon.

Um, however, the way that we describe sworn officers, that is only our SAPD police officers, they would be considered civilians for purposes of uh uh uh employee classification.

So even if we hire retirement SAPD, once they separate from the collective bargaining unit, then they become civilians.

So they wouldn't necessarily be sworn officers, but they would be retired officers with a license to carry.

Correct.

Okay.

Um and is that are we able to mandate that in the contract or in the RFP?

Like this is what we're looking for.

I think we can put anything in the RFP councilwoman and see what interest we maybe instead of doing an RFP, we can do an RFI, which is a request for interest, just to see what what's out there.

Okay, great.

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez?

Thank you.

Um thank you, Councilman, uh, Councilmember Corps for um bringing this idea forward.

I think any opportunity that we have to um reduce some of our costs, reduce response time, and be a little bit more uh effective in how we respond to these calls, I think is a worthwhile endeavor.

I'll echo some of the concerns that uh council council member Castillo brought up about um contractors and those that are not technically city employees.

Um that's about it, denote those concerns.

Um I think as much as I'll leave it there.

That's all's good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilwoman Spears, would you like to comment?

Okay.

Thank you, uh, Chair, and thank you for bringing this forward.

Um, I am interested in seeing how we could potentially do this this type of expansion.

You know, they have to see certain crimes for enforcement reasons.

So what the state requires specifically when it comes to minor traffic accidents, there's a state requirement that an SAPD officer has to complete some forms with the state, so we will ensure that that review continues, even if the call is taken by a civilian expeditor, for example, that we have a process in the event the requirements are met, like for instance the damage is over a thousand dollars, that we have a review process for an SAPD officer to to be able to review that before we send it to the state.

Okay.

And then would this be able to expand code compliance past like the daytime hours potentially?

So uh some of the thoughts that we had uh for code enforcement is yes, potentially um figure out if we could do a team working with SAPD, sort of a combination of civilian and SAPD officers doing targeted proactive approach in some areas of town, uh perhaps uh Thursday through Sunday when we see most of the noise calls overnight.

Um we've had had a challenge in the past with getting our civilian employees to work the overnight hours, so we have to figure that out and perhaps do a pilot program to see what kind of response we we get.

But that's that's generally the idea that we have and then I just also kind of had the same question about carrying the weapon and the requirements there for the retired officers.

Um you answered it, so but thank you.

That's all I had.

Thank you so much.

So I I think just to sum up, I um would at least like to explore what an RFI looks like with just retired SAPD officers, knowing that there is concern from my colleagues that that would be um less accountability from our end, um, but just so we could get a sense of costs, and then maybe some of the costs associated with additional, like if parking did go to civilians, what would that look like for from a cost perspective?

And would we be able to build the capacity for that in this next budget cycle to have those folks being addressed or have folks on staff to be addressing parking loud music, etc.

Sure.

Go ahead.

When you said that it made me think, um, will this affect our police union agreement at all?

Or it does, councilwoman.

So slide 16 of our presentation.

Um specifically if if you if I can direct your attention to the areas highlighted highlighted in blue.

So for instance, if we were to deploy retired SAPD officers to handle minor traffic accidents, that would require a change to our collective bargaining agreement.

And and so on.

Uh if we were to deploy a contractor, if we use civilians to address minor traffic accidents, or if we use civilian crime investigators to address found property, those will require um negotiation with SAPOA in order for us to to be able to implement those options.

So considering we're doing the CBA right now, would this just be subsequent negotiation if this were to go all go into effect?

I mean, we can't do it within the next couple of months, right?

So we'd need to revisit it later.

So I guess for um potential future discussion, if the sense of the committee is that they would like us to consider some changes to the collective bargaining agreement, then that would be something that we would have to discuss in the upcoming negotiations.

Um that is the desire of the public safety committee and and perhaps have a discussion with the full council.

Is that something we should discuss in exec?

Or is that a public discussion?

Uh we uh exec.

So maybe to council members' point, this is something that we could bring up to exec committee to determine if there is enough buy-in.

I think from what I heard, there's a little uncertainty right now still about some of those options.

Um sorry, Liz.

No, it's just for purposes of um it would just get a sense of right, like the legal issues that um are of priority for us and how we intend to address them.

And so if you know, to the extent that you want us to be able to discuss that with full council, that's all we need to know now.

Okay, and then um we can take it from there.

Okay, I think we should discuss that in full council, and I'll pause there without the comments.

Um is there any other uh councilman Castillo?

Brief question.

If uh someone from development services can walk me through the history, um my understanding is development services used to respond to noise complaints or uh was there a change in terms?

I'm just curious to what that history was.

Sure.

If I may provide a little bit of context.

So um back in 2021, 2022, we did a project called police services review, and as part of that um result of that project, we did a pilot program where we had code enforcement officers work overnight and go to address calls that were coming to our 911 system.

However, they were only able to determine if a violation existed, and then they would call SAPD to issue the citation.

Um so that's a program that we did.

Um we can share the evaluation.

I don't remember the specific results, but it wasn't something that that um that was beneficial at the end.

There was no the cause benefit analysis was in there, but happy to to uh provide that to the committee.

That's a good question, Consulwoman.

I I don't know if Liz can address that.

Um it is deputy director of development services.

So if a code officer went out there, we would not be able to issue a citation, we would have to call SAPD out there with us to do that.

Do you know the answer if they're have a license still?

Like what is the authority?

I guess the question was if the contractor could do it, right?

Yeah, and and I don't know the answer to that, so we'll we'll follow up.

Okay.

Okay.

Did you have any other questions for me, Councilman?

Um the follow-up question, which might yes, but I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Thanks, Councilman.

Yeah, thanks, Councilman.

Okay.

Um, would any be uh anybody be opposed?

I I know not everyone said this, and I realized I made that statement without getting full consensus on it.

Would any be anybody be opposed to doing a request for in interest from potential folks?

Just to see what we get back.

I know that wasn't so the thing that I wanted to re to for Maria to do was do a request for interest from folks in the to respond to see like what a pro what they would say they could do in terms of traffic, noise, etc.

To basically get back potential proposals just so we could evaluate costs for San Antonio.

If not, I don't want to I don't want to be the single-handed person that's like asking for city staff to do this work, and this is a committee decision.

So do we should we have the discussion at full council before we make that decision?

Okay.

Okay, so Maria.

All right, we'll have the discussion at full council and then decide if we want to do that.

All right.

Um do you have anything else?

I just wanted to follow your questions.

The contractor would not issue a citation.

The police officer would have to issue a citation if if one was needed.

Even if they were retired.

Yes, yes.

So a police officer, uniformed police officer would need to issue the citation.

Interesting.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, we'll have a follow-up discussion in exact comments.

Thank you so much.

We'll move on to our last item, item number three.

And this was a follow-up on our um SAPD uh data from last meeting to talk about uh drug and narcotics crime.

Good afternoon, uh, Chair, members of the public safety committee, assistant chief Jesse Salome, and I'm uh happy to be here today.

Want to do a deeper dive onto the crime stats specifically talking about narcotics.

I'll start with a brief overview and tell you about why the narcotics threat is significant to our area, to our city.

Uh we'll talk a little bit about the crime trends specific to drugs and narcotics.

Um I want to talk um kind of give some background and some context about how drug activity appears in crime stats.

And I want to uh I'll then brag a little bit about our covert response units, and then we'll talk about the anonymous reporting and how we can work together as a community to uh get get some of these things reported.

Let's just start with narcotics and why it's significant to San Antonio.

Uh that's that's the reality.

We are 150 miles from the Mexican border, and that proximity to the border makes us a hub for narcotics trafficking.

Uh the Mexican drug trafficking organizations use San Antonio as a national national level distribution center for wholesale quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana.

Umganize drug groups operate in and pass through our city every day.

Because we are the largest uh city closest to the border, we are an ideal location for base distribution operations to maintain drug and money stash houses.

Um mid level in retail drug operations take place all areas of the city, and that brings with the uh that brings with that the prime of the crimes and the issues of drug abuse and and crimes in those areas.

And that brings with that brings with that the prime of the crimes and the issues of drug abuse and crimes in those areas.

We also have a sizable street and prison gang population here.

Many gains, many gangs, including the Mexican mafia rely on drug distribution as their primary income source, but they also commit crimes in the course of their drug distribution activities.

And I'm gonna mention the hotspot initiative, the UTSA uh SAPD violent crime plan.

Uh, we did assign a small rotating team of covert detectives last year using the data-driven focused approach that uh we talked about uh so often, and I'm gonna highlight some of their bust here uh throughout the presentation.

So the 2025 crime tends specific to narcotics.

So we saw last year that crimes against society increased 16.7 percent compared to 2024.

That was due in large part to the drug and narcotic offenses going up 21.9% in 2025.

Um, those are offenses that we have identified through law enforcement activity.

There have been no changes to NIVERS reporting.

There's been no changes to the drug law laws last year, so we're attributing that rise to an increase in proactive investigations and enforcement.

The photograph you see here featured in the presentation was in December of last year.

Uh SAPD HIDA detectives and DEA task force officers seized 179 kilos of methamphetamine as a result of a long-term investigation.

Talk about the crime statistics and how they're broken down in the NIBERS.

We know that there's the three categories persons, property, and society.

For the purpose of today, we're gonna talk about drugs.

They fall under the crime against society category in NIVERS.

Uh the numbers reflect offenses and not just arrest.

So, as you can see, drug and narcotics offenses have increased year over year since 2023, and again, that is due to an increased proactive enforcement and investigations.

We looked at the review of the 2025 offense reports specific to drugs and narcotics, and 90% of the drug cases fell within the following three categories: possession of controlled substance, possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Let's talk about drug offenses within crime stats.

And um, there's kind of a tendency sometimes to romanticize drug culture in music, movies, and the media.

Um, and because drug crimes fall into the category of crime against society, we often refer to those as quote unquote the victimless crimes.

But uh drugs, uh that's primarily because we don't have individual people listed as victims in the offense report.

But I hope that today's presentation were very clear that there are real victims of drug-related crimes.

Uh, drug trafficking, drug sales that fuels violent and property crimes, cocaine specifically, uh distribution is typically responsible for the largest share of violent crime in our community.

Uh methamphetamine abuse drives residential burglaries and other property crimes as users still to sustain their addiction.

Um the impact spreads far beyond the users, home invasion robberies, gang activity, organized drug networks, put entire neighborhoods at risk.

So there are true victims of crimes.

The families, the victims of the violent and property crimes, uh the addicted users themselves, and just our overall community safety is impacted by drugs.

That bust you're looking at here, that was uh also last year with tag.

Uh we had proof safe officers in our covert unit.

They seize 10,000 in cash, 14 pounds of meth, a pound of fentanyl, 12 firearms, a stolen classic car, and one flamethrower.

Talk about how drug arrests are authorized under Texas law.

When officers typically make arrests for crimes, we use the Texas Penal Code to find the applicable law that was broken for drugs.

It's the uh we use the Health and Safety Code, which is the Texas Control Substance Act.

So that defines the illegal drugs and the penalty groups and the offenses that go with it.

For any officer to make an arrest on any kind of drug offense, they've got to establish a lawful stop or a contact.

They've got to conduct a lawful search or seizure, and they need to establish probable cause for possession, distribution, manufacture delivery of the narcotics.

Um that picture above is a hotspot location, covert and safe, teamed up to make the arrest.

They got meth, marijuana, and a handgun, and the individual they arrested had a parole violation and was dealing bulk quantities of drugs in that hotspot location.

So driving up that crime kind of single-handedly almost.

Talk briefly about how a narcotics investigations begin.

Your routine proactive police work, just a routine stop, or after a thorough information, uh thorough investigation based on information that's received by the follow-up unit.

Again, every arrest is going to have to be driven by lawful action supported by evidence in order to make that charge.

Talk briefly about the controlled substances and penalty groups in Texas.

So Texas bakes the penalty groups up, uh, penalty group one through four.

The the highest risk substances are penalty group one, and those are going to be the most common examples heroin, coke, methamphetamine, fentanyl.

Um, your other penalty groups on down, your uh penalty group two or your hallucinogens, your synthetic drugs are are also part of that group.

Uh penalty group three is your prescription drugs without the valid prescriptions.

Um, and so the penalties increase based on the quantity, uh, the intent to deliver, if you got prior convictions, or if you're dealing drugs in a drug-free zone.

Marijuana is still illegal in Texas.

Cannot stress that enough.

We there was a lot of changes to the law, and and there's a lot of uh confusion around it.

But um, what really changed that officers must now establish that somebody has a usual uh usable quantity and not just residue.

And they can no longer we can no longer use the odor of marijuana as probable cause because of the legalization of hemp in Texas a couple years ago, and I think that aided in some of the confusion about what was legal and what wasn't.

Uh the penalties vary by again by quantity, uh a couple of ounces will be a misdemeanor, all the way up to uh pounds will be felonies.

And give another uh shout out to the hotspot policing using that data.

They seize 64 pounds of marijuana, 13 grams of cocaine, 24,000 in cash, and 10 firearms, two of which were stolen in that picture there again last year.

Drug paraphernalia, kind of what that is, and that's any item used to make package, hide, or use illegal drugs.

Everyday items can qualify if we can establish that the intent is to be used to store, prepare, or ingest drugs, your pipes, your bongs, vapes, syringes, needles, scales, all of those things can qualify as drug paraphernalia, and we make a lot of arrests for that in conjunction with the drugs that we seize.

We'll talk about our covert response unit.

Um, we've got a number of units within the covert response detail, uh, and a lot of them support narcotics, uh, distribution, narcotics trafficking, and all the related offenses that go with them, whether they're wanted felons, um, whether folks have uh weapons violations, and so you see a number of units listed there are covert, retail crimes, human exploitation.

I'll talk specifically about HIDA, which is the high-intensity drug trafficking areas.

Uh, that is that unit primarily conducts the long-term investigations that target the transnational drug trafficking organizations, and they coordinate with local, state, and federal uh partners.

And then the Texas anti-gag unit, the TAG is a specialized team made up of local, state, and federal partners, and they focus on stopping the violent crime, breaking up the gangs, targeting drug trafficking, and use intelligence and coordinated operations to reduce the gang activity to make us safer.

Um, and we've got a number of federal uh task forces, officers that are on federal task forces, and they combine resource intelligence and authority across the agencies, which allow us greater uh enforcement to target these complex networks of gangs and and um uh sophisticated organizations.

Take a look at last year.

So, in the universe of seizures, our covert unit.

This is what they track last year.

So I would tell you that by and large, patrol makes up a bulk of the drug cases, but they are the smaller amount, the street level buys.

The covert unit really brings in the weight of the drugs, and so they make the the big the big drug bust that we we see and often highlight.

Methamphetamine was 73% of all the drugs that we seized last year.

Meth is a huge problem.

It has flooded the market, not just in San Antonio, but everywhere.

Um we seize 1.4 million grams of narcotics.

Uh if you convert that, that's equal to over 3,000 pounds or just over 1.5 tons, which is roughly the weight of a small car.

So you look down at fentanyl, it makes up a very small amount of the weight, but it is the most dangerous substance that we deal with.

Uh, it is 50 times stronger than heroin, a hundred times stronger than morphine, and even the smallest quality quantities which are measured in milligrams can cause a severe reaction or even death.

And so we don't typically see it by itself.

It's mixed with other with other drugs, uh heroin, cocaine, meth, even uh counterfeit pills, and the real concern is that it's often uh done without the knowledge of the person that's using it, which is very, very dangerous.

You know, Texas has enacted several laws over the last couple of years that have created different uh penalties, enhanced penalties, mandatory sentencing, and different offenses to try to target the uh issue of fentanyl.

Talk lastly about um how we can try to get a handle on this together and the anonymous reporting system for us.

You can submit tips anonymously through TIP 411.

You can go to the uh SAPD, the City of San Antonio SAPD uh website.

Um anyone can tip uh can text essay tip um to then provide information to us, and then you can also download the SA TIP app that's a uh the San Antonio Police Department that's available on iOS and the Android uh platforms.

Um you can put anything in there, you can put very specific information, license plates, vehicle descriptions, addresses, names.

Um when you do submit a tip, you'll get a six-digit code back.

We cannot track who submits the tips.

A detective can has the ability to then text back, but we will never know who you are.

And so I think that's really important to pass along to people to know that they can remain anonymous.

And so that concludes my presentation.

With that, I'll take any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Um, we'll start off with council discussion.

I know Councilman Castillo, this is a passion part for you.

Did you want to start?

Thank you, Jerry.

Thank you, Chief, for the presentation.

And in terms of the covert response units, can you help us understand in terms of how are the operations prioritized?

Like, for example, uh, do you all expect X amount of tips reported or X amount of individuals stopped, and you all have identified and arrested X amount of people?

Just walk us through how y'all prioritize.

Yeah, so I'll give you just let me start by giving you a breakdown.

So we have about 125 personnel total that's assigned to the different uh units within that covert division.

Uh 97 of those are detectives, 10 are officers, and the arrest are supervisors, sergeants, lieutenants, and a captain.

And so they prioritize cases based a lot based on tips, based on information they receive from the public, based on information they receive from safe officers who were primary resource for them, and then they work those those specific tips as you know, those investigations can, you know.

I'll give you an example.

We get a tip that there's a drug location, and we'll go watch the house.

Sometimes it's really obvious what's going on within a few hours.

Sometimes it takes days, sometimes it takes months, depends on how careful they are.

But in addition to targeting like the the drug areas, they also are responsible for a lot of the other things that go along with that.

So we've got the human trafficking, um, the human smuggling, they also do the wanted uh individuals, so people that are wanted on felony warrants, people that are out there committing violent crimes because they operate in a undercover capacity, we can use them anywhere and for anything, not just drugs.

It it all seems to come back to drugs for whatever reason, but um that's that's how they prioritize it.

So they don't, you know, a lot of their work too is just proactive and they're working with other partners as well.

And then uh I'm forgetting which slide, but there's a slide that has like gambling uh instances.

Would y'all say that there's a correlation between some of uh like drug arrest and some of the gambling incidences?

I think it's slides five or six six I miss it.

I know it's a right there for gambling, it's uh a small number, but would would you say there's a correlation between gambling gambling and drug use, substance use?

There could be sometimes it depends on on the nature of what it is they're doing.

I know a lot of these things, the the weapons law violation, you the prostitution, some of those are are you know they're they're the result of what's going on with with drugs, and so yeah, I wouldn't rule it out.

Um I can say that there's probably a correlation for sure.

And then in terms of the reports that you all receive from like the anonymous tips, uh do you all track how many have been closed with an arrest or drugs removed off of the streets?

I I can check back with and get back to you on that.

I'm not sure how they what they track on that, but happy to get back to you on that.

I'm curious to see what that looks like.

Um but those are all my questions.

Just want to thank the chairwoman for agendizing this this item.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chief.

Absolutely.

Councilman Speezer, if you have anything.

Yes, I I too appreciate you agendizing this.

Um because to me, I I went on a tag uh right along, and it's shocking where they move, they know where you are, they they move in concert, they communicate on YouTube, which blew my mind, blew me away.

But um I'm just so impressed with the the collaborative efforts y'all make to to get more drugs off the street, and and I have to say the effect that this has on human trafficking is tremendous because so many won't come forward because they're hooked on drugs or afraid they're gonna get in trouble for a lesser charge, and they just get trafficked to more and more and and and it's just such a sad state of affairs.

So I I can really appreciate what y'all are doing and um how can you can you tell me how long you said you do the co they do the covert ops?

Do you have kind of a guess on a drug-related um operation, how long it takes to set it up?

I mean, I went along on a ride along last week, and they went to so much trouble, and then it just the guy didn't get up.

I guess he was up too late the night before, and he didn't happen to leave the house that day, and it just there's so much effort.

And so I'd like you to kind of expand on how much effort it takes y'all to pull this off, and then it must be very um rewarding when you do, right?

Yeah, no, for sure, and that's that's a common thing over there is that uh you know drug dealers never they don't they don't make their appointments for sure, and so there's a lot of waiting.

There's a lot of times where you're just convinced that the bus is gonna go down that day, and the guy just doesn't call, doesn't show up, and you're like, oh, maybe he's spooked, and they're like, no, no, he just overslept, or he was just busy playing video games or something.

So it is a it is a lot, these are long-term complex investigation.

I would argue that the more sophisticated um the more um that there's boundary lines where you're dealing with you know, uh, people that are either international or across state lines, they take a very, very long time.

Um of the ones that are a lot easier, a lot quicker is the complaints we get for an active drug house.

And everybody knows what's going on.

We'll send somebody out there, we'll watch for a couple of hours, a couple days, or we'll tip it, we'll make some bust, find out what's going on in there, and then we can get a warrant probably within a couple of days.

Um, but it could range from a couple of days to a couple of months um or longer.

It is just it is that complex, that sensitive, and and there's also we have to be cognizant of other people who may be providing information, and we certainly don't want to do anything that could get somebody hurt in the in our objective of trying to shut down a house or arrest a drug dealer.

So is there any additional training or specific training you go through to um be in one of these units or like a an amount of time on the force sort of thing, or can you tell me more about what's required to be in this in this part of the state?

Yeah, so a lot of the a lot of the officers that end up promoting as detectives and some of the off we have do have officers that are assigned there.

Um a lot of their experience comes primarily from work in the streets, and they just some folks have a knack for um chasing those things down and seeing drug activity and being able to um articulate stops and and make arrest based on that, and so that is a you know our training ground primarily is patrol.

Uh, before you get promoted, you've got to spend five years on patrol, and so you really couldn't do a lot of good proactive work there.

And if you're proactive on patrol, you're gonna go to a specialized unit like um like the covert unit or tag.

Once you get there, then they provide unit level um specialized training.

Um, you know, hida, they get some really intense training that um makes them really efficient and really good at their job.

So it would sound like we'd need to make sure we keep the patrol pipeline running pretty strong so we can continue to reduce drugs in our community.

Yes, ma'am.

Sounds like all right.

Well, thank you so much.

Appreciate the presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman Spears.

I think Councilmember Jalen McCruz McKee would you guys have to drop off to take care of Sarai.

So um, I'll just end off by saying the one thing that I've seen is communication.

Um I and how we can improve communication with our safe officers and folks that are on the ground that are seeing to our other teams.

So I'll just give you one example.

We had a dart that we um really pushed forward in our district on the north part of our northwest east part of our district, and it was an address that we had been monitoring in several departments, but when they was trying to get prioritized from the traditional way, and I think it was scheduled for like two or three months out, because I have a very strong relationship with the tag officer who's on the team.

I got a phone call, and she said you need to prio this, and then it got priod.

And so it just is sometimes happens, a lot of things happen this way.

But I do think we need to figure out a better way to have cross communication from our teams, and then also make sure to um uh councilman's point is ensuring that the right people are on those teams.

So does there need to be different types of detectives like homicide detectives on certain teams to be able to again cross collaborate?

I from what I've seen from folks on the ground who I talk to and connect with, the cross uh the teams that work across state level federal are actually pretty good in collaboration with each other.

They do a good job of partnering and and working with each other, but how can we in all of the other areas support them to make sure they have the right people that they need and they are sufficiently staffed?

Um, so that's just from what I've seen from you know qualitative communications.

But I do think those folks are doing a great job, and we should continue to support them because this is a really big issue.

Um, all right, that's all I have.

Does anybody else have anything on this topic?

Okay, thank you guys for bearing through the long agenda today.

Have a great Thursday.

Uh, the time is four o'clock p.m.

on the dot.

Public safety committee is adjourned.