All right, good afternoon.

The time is now 2 34 p.m.

and we'll call public safety committee meeting to order.

Madam Clerk, could you please call roll?

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez.

Councilmember Castillo?

Here.

Councilmember Spears.

In Taiwan.

Councilmember White?

Councilmember, I'm sorry, Chair Corps.

Here.

Um Chair, we have a quorum.

Okay, great.

So we have several items on the agenda today, but let's take a minute approval of the minutes first.

Does anybody have any changes to make?

If not, I'll take a motion.

We have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Any opposed?

Oh, yes, you were not.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Yes.

All right.

Uh motion.

Does that yeah?

It'll carry three zero one.

Um welcome, Councilmember White to Public Safety Committee.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh the first the second item on the agenda is our fire department performance metrics.

So, Councilmember White, for your edification.

What we um do is we do a memorandum of statistics every meeting that just shows a different department and several metrics that they're tracking, and then we'll do a deep dive the following meeting depending upon what folks say is of interest to them.

So this first one, um, well, for your first one is fire department, and we also know that Councilmember McKee Rodriguez has requested uh fire needs assessment, and the update I just received was that we should be hiring a consultant for that at the end of the month.

So um, I'm sure you'd like if you want to comment on that when it comes up.

But I would like Chief or Maria to give a little bit of an overview.

Sure.

So I'm gonna ask Chief Frasto to do a quick overview of the statistics so you all can select the ones that you want to look into a little bit more.

And I just want to add on the uh fire department needs assessment, the proposal is set on the street at closest at the end of this month.

So we're gonna bring it to council for approval, probably by the end of April or early May.

Um, so we can hope have some recommendations related to staffing by the budget process.

Um today I will briefly walk through the fire department's operational activity over the past couple of fiscal years and where we are at so far uh this year.

As far as incident activity, um, as you'll see on the screen, the in fiscal year 2024, SAFD responded to about 247,070 incidents, and in fiscal 2025, that increased slightly to 253,322 incidents, which is about a two and a half percent increase overall.

So uh as you can see, emergency medical responses continue to make up most of our workload, um, accounting for roughly 78 percent of total incidents, which is consistent with national trends with urban fire departments through the end of February this fiscal year.

The department has already responded to more than 102,000 incidents.

So I've also provided an overview of unit responses, which is on the uh page two of the memo.

And um so far this fiscal year we've already recorded over 166,000 unit responses, which keeps us on pace with prior years.

I've also included the incident activity by district, and when we look at activity across the city, districts one, two, and five continue to see the highest call volumes, and that's largely due to high population density, uh the older infrastructure, and obviously the the commercial um activity that is very dense in that area as well.

Moving on to the next page of the memo is the busiest fire stations.

Um break these out between single and double companies, but uh this time we we listed the top 10.

Uh most of those as you can see are double company fire stations.

Um overall, the busiest stations continue to be um fire station 32, 35, and 29, 37, and 44.

Um again, these these stations, double companies, very high uh population density, and they're uh very um high EMS demand and population.

So next item the uh call types.

Um when we look at call types respond to for non-medical calls, the most common responses include fire alarms, lift assists, smoke investigations, and and brush fires, and for medical incidents, the most frequent calls include sick person, uh vehicle collisions, falls, breathing problems, and chest pain.

So these have remained consistent year over year.

The next item is uh on the next page of the memo is structure fire activity.

And in uh fiscal year 2025, the department responded to just under 1200 structure fires.

Most of those occurred in single family homes, followed by multifamily residential, and then next would be commercial properties.

Um and then the following item is mobile integrated health care.

Uh this area continues to support our system.

Um the MIH program, it continues to connect residents to uh the appropriate care resources and helps reduce the unnecessary 911 utilization.

And through February, end of February of this fiscal year, the program has already made over 8,000 contacts.

Next, you'll see fire prevention.

In addition to the emergency responses, our fire prevention division conducted nearly 24,000 inspections last year, which helps us address risks before emergencies happen.

In closing, overall, the data shows steady service demand, strong operational performance, and continued focus on prevention and alternative responses to help manage the workload while keeping the community safe.

And um I don't know if you've had a chance to review this beforehand, but if there are any specific data points or trends that you would like us to um explore in detail, we'd be happy to present that next committee meeting.

Thank you, Chief.

Anything else, Marie?

Okay, great.

Um committee members, would you like any specific items from this to be um for a deep dive next month?

Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chief.

Uh, not necessarily for an individual briefing item, but I think what would be being uh beneficial for me to review is in terms of specific district five data, for example, with the top 10 non-medical incidents and the top 10 medical ins incidences.

Uh would you all be able to break that down by district?

Uh and I request that information, like for example, if I find that in district five, the top medical incident is for a fall, it would help me understand how I need to advocate for project mend uh or home rehab programs for rails, walkers, so on and so forth.

So I think having a more district-specific breakdown for those calls would be helpful for me uh in terms of what should we be prioritizing as a council office.

So if I could receive that, that'd be helpful.

Yes, ma'am.

All right, thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Chair.

Go ahead, Councilmember White.

Yeah, well one thing I noticed, Chief.

Um the memo talks about response times remaining stable, but there's no benchmark data, target times, compliance rates, things like that.

Can we get something showing uh the department's um target response times, average response time by unit type, and and and what percentage of the calls met those standards?

Yes, sir.

You uh win the door prize today because you recognize that we left that off accidentally.

Um but response time performance um just FYI.

Obviously, we're gonna pull the specifics on that, but I know that year over year it's increased by one second.

And this fiscal year up through end of February, it actually dropped.

Um, I think it's eight.

So it's actually trending um, you know, for the better.

Okay.

See that this is why you wanted me back, Chair.

Yeah, missed it so much.

Sorry about inadvertently leaving that off the document.

Councilmember QRGS.

Thank you.

Um thank you for the presentation and for the memo.

Um what I'd be interested in as well the the top 10 call types for non medical and medical.

What I'd really like to see um I think at least citywide for the a potential discussion here is trends going back to maybe 2019, thinking just pre-pandemic to present.

And what I would be interested in from there is seeing um you know, are there any what are the trends?

Are there any types of um incidents that are going up that are turning upwards or that are training downwards?

And are there any policy or investments, policy decision making or investments that we could make that might address some of those trends?

So I'm interested in that citywide.

For sure, I would love that information for district two specifically.

Um, but I think that's the that's the discussion I would like to have.

There was something else I cannot recall.

I'll think about it later, but thank you, it's on.

Thanks, Chief.

Um, what is MV, and I'm sorry if you said this and I missed this, but what is MVC stand for?

Motor vehicle collision.

Oh, got it.

Um I think I I like Councilman Castillo's idea of breaking down by area, even by district or by area, even by station of those calls to see where we're getting most of those types of calls.

Um, and then the other thing that I was thinking of is we're coming up to UDC code changes and uh from folks thinking about our housing and planning discussion, it'd be helpful to see these multifamily um structural fires and the single family structural fires like broken down by cause if it's possible.

I don't know what you guys actually track to see, you know, are there is the multifamily big large multifamily or are they the smaller units or what is the causes for that?

And for multi-family, like how many, because sometimes like when I get your messages, they're like a couple of like one fire caused a couple damage in a couple of units, or et cetera.

So if it's possible, what do you guys usually code?

Do you code like cause of fire if it's possible if you figure it out?

Yes, if there's a suspicious, if it's not obvious, we will call fire investigators to the scene, and uh even arson investigators will conduct a full-on investigation and determine the fire origin and the fire cause, and then that will be documented on the incident report.

Okay, yeah, I think that's what I would like to dig in a little bit more too for the structure fires to see what they're caused by.

And then um the mobile integrated health.

This is the first time I'm looking at this data specifically like this, and it's super interesting, and I didn't um quite know the level of work that was going on in um the specific area.

So I'm not sure if how we could look at that a little bit more to see like where additionally could we provide support.

Like I see the SA core number grow triple, and I know that's because we tripled investment basically in SA core of the last several years.

And so I'm just thinking, what are the other ways?

What are the other areas of these um integrated health components that need more support?

Um, and what are the results when we do transfer to those folks?

So those are some of the things, and I just wanted for my committee members, we're going to show at the next meeting as well the updated dashboard and map that the fire department has been working on with Maria's department, so she'll walk us through what that looks like.

Any other oh go ahead, Councilmember McCoy.

Thank you.

Yes, just remembering now uh regarding the structure fire data.

Uh would also like to know any causes if you can get that data uh broken down for us.

And I'm really interested in do you know how like uh maybe a percentage, even if it's anecdotally, um, how many of these are vacant structures?

I do not um, but we probably can um obtain that data uh in order to give you a count of how many of those involved in fire were vacant.

Okay, yeah.

That'd be excellent.

And then also just looking at uh page two over the memo, the overall responses.

I would I would guess that maybe it's page one actually.

Incidents, yeah, I get number one.

I would guess that incidents are greatest around December, January, April, and then summer, like July, August.

Is that I would say that's pretty accurate.

Um we definitely it's seasonal, and uh we see an uptick around the holidays um and summertime with the the heat and kids out of school, obviously.

Okay, yeah.

So we can expect probably that by the end of the year it'll be I I guess I don't know.

I would imagine some amount of balance, but I I don't know that it'll be less than last year's councilman.

We can provide a trend analysis when we come back in April to kind of show you in previous years what what is the seasonality and then um what we're seeing this year compared to to the last few years.

I think what may also be helpful when we're doing the I guess uh conversation following it because again, I think about the work of the committee being policy making and reviewing initiatives and making improvements there.

What is what are all the initiatives that aim to prevent uh incidents in the summertime caused by heat and then during the holidays, so that we can maybe I don't know, I would be good to have a check in there.

Yeah, similarly it's basically what the councilman Castilla was saying is like where are we investing in as a result of the data, right?

And so I was thinking about when you're talking about that, there was that big brush grass fire on the south side last year in 2025, which is why I think that number, I mean just my estimate, but that number went up 400 calls for that situation or for that type.

And so it would be good for us to do maybe more community engagement and education communication around when we are having um droughts and potential more potential increase in brush fire.

So I see where you're going there and why it matters.

Excited about the uh fire department needs assessment.

Uh can't wait for that to come to council.

Thank you.

Awesome.

All right, we will move on to item number three, which is an update on our year three violent crime reduction plan.

Councilmember White, don't fall out of your seat.

Uh members of the public safety committee.

Uh, Dr.

Smith, uh UTSA professor has been our partner in the implementation of this crime reduction plan.

This is our third year report, and the uh outcomes of the plan are satisfactory.

So Dr.

Smith will go over that, and then Maria Vargas will talk about phase three of the crime plan as that's the phase that we have not started, but we're in the in the planning uh phases.

Dr.

Smith.

Thank you, Maria, and good afternoon uh to all of you.

Um thanks for having us and giving us the opportunity to update you on the work that thank you.

SAPD and others have been doing in the last year.

Um this is the third annual evaluation that we've done of the San Antonio Violent Crime Reduction uh plan.

And so um, well, let's jump into it.

Maybe not.

There we go.

Okay.

Um just uh by way of refresher, um the overall plan has three primary strategies: a um a hot spots policing strategy that's been underway uh for three years since it was the first strategy uh that was implemented and has been um has been uh underway for um for the entire time.

Um the midterm strategy is what we call problem-oriented place-based policing.

It's a it's a problem-oriented uh strategy focused on frequently or persistently violent places, um, and that has been underway in in two locations now for um a couple of years.

And um, our longer term strategy um has not yet um gotten started.

It's um, but I believe um uh we have an update um from the city about that later today, but focused deterrence is the long-term strategy, and um it's an offender focused strategy designed to help uh break the cycle of violence among uh uh repeat and persistently violent individuals um and provide them an off-ramp and uh hopefully a different way to to live their lives.

So uh those are the three strategies.

Um the report will focuses primarily on the impacts of one and two because those are the ones that have been underway in in 2025.

Um I don't have the clicker anymore, so uh next slide, thank you.

Um so again, uh hot spots underway.

Um the hotspots treatment uh intervals are two months or 60 days in duration, and then um the police move resources around depending on the um on crime and uh crime patterns and um and it rolls like that every 60 days throughout the course of the year.

Um the uh update on primary place-based policing will focus primarily on the second location uh that went sort of live or in June of 2025 at 4032 South Cross.

Next slide, please.

This is just a trend graph of crime over the life of the crop of the crime plan.

Um that is violent street crime that you're seeing there, uh which is defined for our purposes as murder, robbery, and aggravated assault.

Um thank you very much.

The um the red is what crime was doing in San Antonio prior to the introduction of the crime plan in January of 2023.

That's the first vertical blue line that you see.

That's the start of the crime plan.

Each of those blue lines is a year.

Um and then um and then the green is what crime has been doing in San Antonio uh in the in the past three years.

The dotted line that trends very closely to the solid line is the line that represents victims, and the solid line represents the number of incidents by month.

And so overall from the beginning of the crime planed to or from the end of the crime plan where we are today.

Looking backward to the three years prior, you've got about a nine and a half to 10% reduction in violent crime, and a little bit more of that in victims across the entire life of the crime plan.

That's the last three years.

But that decrease steepened considerably in this year.

This past year, 2025.

And San Antonio saw about a 21% reduction in violent street crime incidents and a similar amount in victimization during the last year, which is I think fantastic.

Okay.

Next slide, please.

I guess I have this now.

Thanks.

This gives you a breakdown on change in crime in year three, January of 25 to the end of the year to December 25 by crime type.

So we saw an 18% reduction in murder, 17% reduction in robbery, aggravated assaults were down about 20% in deadly conduct, was down about 32% in 2025 compared to the previous year.

This is a graph that compares uh violent crime, violent street crime by police substation.

The orange bars are this year, 2023, or excuse me, 2025 this past year, and the blue bars are the are the year before the comparison year, which is would be 2024.

So as you can see, the orange bars are all shorter than the blue bars, uh, which is like what we like to see.

Um you saw violent crime reductions in in all of the police substations, um, and the percentages are summarized for you at the top of the slide.

Um you had really good size reductions in a number of police substations, including in the east and in the west, uh, and in the north and downtown, and then Prue in the south and central weren't quite as um, didn't see quite as much of a reduction, but still um uh a healthy double-digit reduction compared to the year before.

This gives you uh graphical depiction of um of crime in our in our hot spots, um, and we we list the citywide there to the far left of the graph is the citywide, the 21% reduction that I mentioned a minute ago, just by way of reference.

Um so reading across from left to right, you have 21% decrease in violent street crime in San Antonio in 2025 compared to the year before.

In our treated areas, that is those um hot spots that are 300 meter grids, um, and you've got um about 133, 134,000 of those in San Antonio.

Uh we treat somewhere between 30 and 35 of those every 60 days, and those are your most violent places that get treated.

Um that next bar over from reading left to right, the one that's got the 63.2 percent below it.

That's what crime, violent street crime did in those um 30 to 40 grids uh that we treat every 60 days.

So that's a very substantial reduction in violent street crime at more than 63 percent.

Um and then the next two bars, there are two types of treatment that occur during a hot spot period.

One is an offender focused treatment where um the SAPD uh uses some of its specialty units to focus on uh repeat and high-risk offenders in these places in these high-risk places, um, and we call that an offender-focused treatment type, and then there's a high visibility treatment, and you may have seen some of these around the city.

Um that's a police vehicle with all its emergency lights illuminated with the officer out of the car, um, kind of foot patrolling around the area for about 15 minutes during a peak crime hour.

And so those next two bars break down the crime reduction by those two treatment types.

So offender focused treatment areas experienced an 83% reduction in violent crime, and your high visibility treated areas were down more than 50%.

One of the things that we also do, of course, is we look at whether crime was displaced uh spatially around the areas that are being treated.

So we call that those areas um catchment areas.

So we build out thousand-foot catchment areas around each treated hotspot where we look for potential crime displacement.

Um we we rarely see that occasionally we do, um, but what we typically see is this we see a what we call a diffusion of benefits effect where the area around the grid that's being treated experiences a crime reduction effect, usually not as great as the the place that's being treated itself.

Um and that's and that's uh consistent here.

So about a 24% reduction in violent crime in the areas immediately surrounding your hotspots.

This is a um a differences in differences analysis.

Um it's an econometric analysis that compares uh crime in your areas, the hot spots that were treated to areas that were not treated.

And so it helps um helps us isolate the hotspot treatment effect relative to a group of control places that weren't treated.

Um the um the percent reduction using this particular technique is was about 44 percent.

So your the treated hot spots um crime in treated hotspots was down um nearly 50 percent compared to places that were not treated.

One of the things we also do is we look to see um how long the treatment effect lasts once the police move to the next set of grids.

Uming that some of the grids roll over period to period, um oftentimes they don't, but sometimes they do.

Um but we like to look to see what happens in these places once treatment is removed.

And what you see here is is what we typically see, which is that the treatment effect persists.

It's kind of a free benefit if you think about it that way, because there are no police resources being devoted during the months after treatment, and yet in usually in the first month anyway, you still continue to see a crime reduction effect and before crime begins to rise uh again in return to just on a kind of average levels.

Um so you get about a month of free treatment, I guess is one way of looking at it.

Um, and so crime was down 30 percent in the first month uh after hot spot treatments were removed to the next place.

Dr.

Smith, sorry to interrupt you, but I was just informed that we have two hard cutoffs that's earlier than before.

So if you want to we have the data and we've skimmed through it, but if you if there are specific things that you want to highlight through the rest as we're going through it, that would be great.

Sure.

Okay, um, violent crime arrests are down uh 60 percent in your treated hotspots, um, as were weapons arrests, uh, all things that we like to see.

Um violence related calls for service are down uh citywide and particularly in treated hot spots.

Um this tells you that the police were where we wanted them to be in the hot spots that were scheduled to be treated 92% of the time.

Uh and that's a very, very high uh fidelity rate.

Um the second strategy that's underway is the problem-oriented place-based policing strategy.

Uh the results for 2025 focus on the second location, 4032 South Cross Boulevard, uh, which when we started this uh in June was ranked first in the city in violent crime incidents and second in violence related calls for service.

Work started there in June of 2025.

Um that the city working group put together have been implemented in the last in the in that six-month period from June essentially to December of 2025.

Um and we track uh in addition to tracking kind of what's been done.

Uh we also track outcomes uh of interest like violent crime, victims, violence, violence related calls for service, and so forth.

They're all down.

Um violent crime is down uh 50 percent on average per month.

Uh violent victimization similarly, um, and violence related calls for service were down as well.

Um so as this place has been treated and resources have been devoted to it, um the quality of life has improved, um, and these crime metrics have improved as well.

Um that's your summary slide, and um kind of where we going next is is hopefully focused deterrence, and uh and again I I think Maria uh Vargas has maybe more to say about that, but um but that's where we are, and um happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much.

I'll start off with council member discussion on the data.

Councilmember White.

Thank you for this.

Um I'm just gonna start off with what I think is the most or the most straightforward big picture takeaway from this.

Is there is there any question in your mind?

And you've been doing this for what a couple of years now, right?

Three years here in San Antonio.

Is there any question in your mind at all that this hot spot policing decreases crime?

No question at all.

Okay.

And so that we're all clear, hot spot policing involves putting police personnel on the ground in these high crime areas, right?

About 30 to 40 uh per 60 days out of 134,000.

Okay.

And if we look if we look back at that that slide with the year three results uh on the hot spots, um you said in your words were very substantial reduction.

Sick citywide might be 21 percent crimes down, but 63 percent crime being down in the areas where more police are put on the ground.

That's right.

And when you make the police extra visible on the ground, right?

This treatment three HV treatment crime, it's down 52 percent.

Correct.

Um moving to the to your next slide, it can you tell me again that 44 percent what that represents?

Yeah, we compare the the grids that were treated during the year with a hot spot treatment to grids that were not treated, and that represents a 44 percent difference.

Grids that were treated versus those that were not treated.

Correct.

So again, we're looking at the highest crime areas in the city.

Correct.

And the ones where there were more police personnel on the ground had a bigger reduction in crime?

They had a 44 percent reduction compared to those that had crime but were not treated.

Okay.

And the next marker there, the 30 percent, is that even after the police personnel left the area?

Correct, the areas where there were more police at one point still showed some decrease in crime.

Yeah, for about a month.

Okay, uh I guess um I don't know if this is this is a a question for you, but um how do we how do we determine how how do we determine which areas to select?

Yeah, so that the the um the treated areas, those uh the hotspot areas that get treated are selected based on crime trends in the previous 60 days.

We look at it in two lenses in the in the in the previous 60 days, and then we also go out and look at it in the previous year.

Um but the focus is largely on what was crime doing in the previous 60 days because what we know is that the the strongest predictor of where crime is going to be in the next 60 days is where it was occurring during this 60 day period.

So that's the primary predictor of where police resources are redistributed every 60 days.

It's based on where crime happened in the most recent 60 days, and so we simply um map that crime down to those small grid areas across the entire city.

We rank order them.

Um actually Maria's team does this now.

Um we rank order them from uh highest to lowest.

Um and then the SAPD can treat its resources, allow it to treat somewhere around 30 to 35 of them, uh, and that's where they go.

And and did you say, did you say that there were a hundred and thirty-four thousand high crime?

No, there's a hundred and thirty-four thousand three hundred meter grid squares in the city of San Antonio.

Got it.

And we treat between 30 and 35 of them roughly every 60 days.

Got it.

Got it.

Okay.

Um reason at all to think that if additional high crime areas were treated, that we wouldn't see the same reduction in crime in those areas.

Um there's no reason to think that we put it to you this way.

There are we, you know, SCPD is can treat 30 to 35 of these high crime grids every 60 days.

Well, well, let me stop you there.

What do you mean they can treat them?

Basically, that's what their resources allow them to treat.

Okay, and so if they had more resources, more personnel, they'd be allowed that they could treat more areas.

Yes, where I was going.

So there are more, we could identify more than 30 to 35 typically that probably could be treated with to effect.

Now, at some point, crime is um is so low that putting officers there is unlikely to make a difference, but there are a band below that top 35 that probably would could still make a treatment list if there were sufficient resources to treat them.

Okay.

Um uh one other question here.

Um you guys had independent evaluation of phases one and two uh of this plan.

Yes.

Um, who's gonna evaluate phase three and will there be a formal evaluation framework set forth?

We will do that.

Um that treatment hasn't uh that strategy hasn't gone into effect yet, so there's nothing to report on.

But we'll we'll be the ones to do that.

You'll be the one all right.

All right, thanks, Chair.

Did you want to add anything?

Okay, Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Dr.

Smith, for the presentation.

I'm pleased to see that the reductions are similar to the trend that we've seen across the United States with the reduction in homicide, uh homicides rather, uh, reduction in aggravated assaults that we're seeing uh across the nation.

But I did want to highlight one key point and commend Captain Hightower, uh, the West Substation has seen the uh highest reduction in crime, so just wanted to commend you and your team.

Uh Sergeant Ross is one of our favorites in District 5, so just really appreciate the work of you and your team uh out over in the West Substation.

Uh I did have a question in terms of the hot spots and the correlation with the the dangerous assessment team, the DART team.

Uh, within these hot spots, has there been any coordination or overlapping with DART properties within the hot spots?

So uh if if I may you can add more.

So the hotspot policing, as Dr.

Smith mentioned, is primarily in those areas where we have violent crime.

Um a DAR property may not have those same qualifications, so it may or may not be locations included.

I'm not aware of any councilwoman, but we can do that analysis to see those any overlap, but they're two different programs.

Yes.

Um, but we're happy to see if there's any trend between the two.

Yes, I I'd like to see if there is a correlation uh in terms of some of those properties as well as with the the good neighbor program, right?

Are we seeing specific census tracts, zip codes, uh, and or blocks where there's also a correlation?

Uh and then I had a question on the offender focus.

Can you walk me through what that looks like?

That would be the SAPD.

You're asking about focus deterrence on the offender focus part of the presentation.

Can you walk me through what that looks like?

How habitual offenders are identified and what that work looks like in terms of the offender focus of this program?

So I think there's there's a offender focused portion of phase one, which is we identify, and I think we're kind of commingling the focus deterrence aspect of phase three.

So the offender focused portion of phase one, we just identify those locations that have violent crime, and then rather than do high visibility treatments, we do what we call enforcement treatment, which is basically proactive policing efforts in there rather than um sit with our lights on for 15 minutes at set increments.

We use uh street crimes and our covert unit to go in and and focus on individuals that may be in the complex, most of the time is an apartment complex uh that are driving crime in that area, and so it's not that we know who is in that complex at the time, but we try to just do more randomized uh enforcement efforts and identify the people that are in those areas that may be driving crime and try to address them.

And then in the trends of the offender focused component, uh is there a typical um like I guess what is the cause of stopping someone suspected of being uh a repeat offender?

And so a lot of the so the offender focused part, for example, we may use SAFE.

Let's say we have an apartment complex.

Safe may go in and through their relationship with the community in that area or the management, ask them is there someone here that is being problematic?

Is there is there a department that might be selling drugs?

Uh, where does a crime happen?

Does it happen at the community pool or the mailboxes and safe will go in and try to gather that information?

It's not so much that we're identifying individuals, but potential sources of crime in those areas.

And so, and then after you know the residents or the management says uh apartment number 13, uh we think they're up to no good, then we use covert and other resources to try to put uh focused efforts on those.

I think I appreciate you.

Um that was really helpful in coloring that picture for me.

Um lastly, in in terms of the area focus where we move to the focused deterrence, I guess what what is that phase look like?

Uh have you already identified are there vacant lots?

Uh are there vacant structures?

Uh, and and what are next steps in that component?

And Maria, maybe you want to go through the few slides that you have on the Oh, sorry, I skipped it in Desmond Okay, yes, Maria Vargas, director of integrated community safety office.

So phase three focused deterrence will uh be composed of SAPD, ICSO, uh potentially other external city partners such as the DEA and others who identify individuals who are repeat offenders in the community.

So it's person-based versus phase one and phase two are very much place-based.

And so phase three, we're shifting to specific individuals, uh, repeated violent criminal offenders and looking to have an intervention with them to deter them from committing further crimes.

And so it's also sometimes referred to as pulling levers.

Um, and you might also hear people refer to it as like a care in a stick type of approach where your stick is saying, we know who you are and we know your history, and we are observing you and watching you, and if you commit another violation, then we're going to ensure that your prosecution is prioritized and we'll be partnering with the DA to ensure that there's no leniency, et cetera.

And if you uh would like to instead work with us and connect you to services to identify your needs and meet those needs to help individuals who maybe cannot uh get out of a certain kind of criminal aspect, especially those in gangs or in other kinds of social networks that feel like they have no other options, we can give them options.

And so right now we're partnering with DHS to leverage consolidated funding to identify a nonprofit partner in the community to provide some of those social services to get that individual into a place where they can be stabilized and have income that's not related to criminal activity.

And so things like uh trauma counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, substance abuse treatment, education, such as GED and job training and job placement, housing, and other basic needs.

So as of right now, our timeline is that consolidated funding, RFP is closed in January, and we are currently reviewing the uh in scoring the submitted proposals on April 29th.

Human services will present recommendations to city council at B session on May 7th, awards will be considered by council, and on June 1st, contracts begin.

So we would hope to have a partner to help us do focus deterrence uh to provide some of those needs that these individuals require.

And so we're looking to potentially start focused deterrence in calendar year, so 2026 calendar year Q4.

Thanks, Maria.

Did you have additional questions?

Yeah, um Maria, you may want to uh unless Dr.

Smith you have something.

Okay, go ahead, Councilman Castle.

Thank you, Chair.

And then uh in terms of the deterrence nonprofit partner section, uh, have you all explored y'all currently partnering with the Bear County Re-entry Center?

And then one of the parole offices is in my district off of Guadalupe.

Uh, is that something that y'all also partner with if there's a focus on offenders uh to let them know about the resources that are available and then also the initiatives that are taking place out in the community?

Sure.

I can't speak in too much detail about the consolidated funding process because we are in the middle of reviewing those proposals and uh DHS is here in case they can speak with greater detail uh than I can.

And then as far as the parole office, I think is what you mentioned.

Uh the if it's a state of Texas parole office, we can attempt to work with the state, and I know that uh UTSA Dallas is doing focused deterrence, and they have um attempted to make that connection.

And so I don't know if you want to describe how that attempt went, but we do want to partner with other agencies to have that continued leverage with offenders.

So if they're on probation or parole, like you described, we can use that to try to get them into services.

So um councilman, I would say that we have not attempted to make that connection yet here in San Antonio, and Dr.

Smith can talk to the experience in Dallas.

So once we have the part the nonprofit partner, then we're gonna begin reaching out to um entities outside the city to start forming the team that will make this focus deterrence uh work.

And I think there's a lot of value in that cross-collaboration because the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has a lot of grants uh in terms of providing workforce opportunities for individuals on parole uh as well as resources for housing uh individuals on pro as well.

So I think can help with the the long-term solution.

Those are my comments.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilman.

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez.

Thank you.

Thank you for the update and for the presentation.

Um just because the slide is already up.

I remember we were having a conversation about the consolidated uh or not about the delegate agency funding.

This is that this is a it is it is the same thing, Councilman.

Okay, wonderful.

So I think something to be noted is that um several years ago um we started having conversations about public safety through a holistic lens, and we acknowledge that in order to reduce crime, we have to make a concerted effort to address the root causes.

We can throw more officers, we can continue to uh provide resources to responding to crime, but unless we are making a very active effort to address those root causes, crime will go up because of uh economic uncertainty, um, desperation, all kinds of things that lead people to feel like they have to uh they're in a they're in a certain predicament and now they're uh committing crimes and whatnot.

And so you can ask the question if we have more police officers, is that going to lead to a reduction of crime?

Is this you know if we did hot spots uh at more places, would that lead to a reduction in crime?

The answer is likely yes, as we've heard, right?

But when you invest in housing, does that lead to a reduction in crime?

When you invest in mental health resources, does that lead to a reduction in crime?

When you uh when your community has jobs with benefits and livable wages, does that reduce crime?

When you support nonprofits and social services, does that lead to a reduction in crime?

And the answer for all of those things is yes.

And so while I can appreciate the very clear and hard fast direction of you know hire more police and let that be the end all be all and all of our problems will be solved.

The reality is that that is not the case.

And so we have to find a balance with very limited resources, and so uh I think the nonprofits that um will ultimately end up selecting.

I'm happy to know that we're going to be looking at their role through a lens and how can they help us achieve our crime prevention goals.

Um we also several years ago uh allocated ARPA dollars, and we were very strategic in how we did that, and we wanted to uh invest in all of those things that I mentioned before: the housing, mental health, youth and senior services, uh all of that.

And we also wanted to increase access to food and to uh health care and all of those things.

And so I think it's going to be important that with our very limited uh resources and as we navigate a budget deficit that we're navigating it with a clear mind that it's not just one solution is not gonna be the end all be all.

We have to find a balance between all of our investments.

Um I I say all that to get us to phase two and phase three.

Where are we at in terms of uh funding for phase three?

So right now we have the funding for the nonprofit partner as part of the delegate agency funding process.

Uh, one of the things that we are evaluating is the capacity within Maria's uh team to be able to dedicate one individual to be able to be that coordinator, and we are exploring if there's going to be any additional costs that we can bring to uh for discussion as part of the budget process.

We don't have that firm as of now.

Um we think we can manage it with the current resources that we have, but if that was not the case, and we would we would make a request as part of the budget process.

Gotcha, because I'm also wondering with phase two.

Um I'm happy we're seeing the implementation of recommendations for uh those properties, including South South Cross, right?

Um it would be nice if we could do more than one property at a time if we could do more than one or two properties at a time, and I know that that's also one that that's also an investment that requires uh a pretty big commitment.

Um and so what does it look like to uh maybe do three or four in a quarter in a certain period of time and to do that?

I would like I would like to speed up that process.

Um so that would be I think I guess I'm looking for how we can do that.

What would that if I were to ask that in question form?

We have we now have done just two we've done two properties and phase two.

What does the cost look like generally at a property on average, and then can we figure out how we could do three, four, five and in the next year or so?

We can explore that uh councilman and bring that back to the public safety committee.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

And thank you again.

Thank you, council member.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um I just have a couple of quick things.

So overall we saw a seven percent in decrease in violent crime from 24 to 25.

Would you say that this was the because the statistically significant data that you show is a 44% decrease in that specific area?

Are you able to translate that to the percentage of overall violent crime that is decreased?

So over the life of the crime plan, the last three years, violent crime is down about nine and a half or ten percent.

Um in the last year, it's down more, it's down 20, 21 percent.

Okay, the we've seen a drop in each of the years.

It's just that that decrease has steepened in the last year of the crime plan.

So our the data that we were shown from 24 to 25 showed a seven percent decrease in violent crime.

So I would I'm not sure what that but so uh I'm not sure what data you're you're looking at or what's the crime statistics.

If I may perhaps to clarify, so uh the data that the um councilwoman is mentioning is our overall NIVER statistics that includes more than violent crime.

Yeah, and um the work that Dr.

Smith has been helping us with specific is specific to a few of the crimes within the violent crime family.

Which ones are those?

So robbery, aggravated assault.

Assault, homicide, and then what what's the other one?

Dot it.

Yeah.

Those are still don't I'm trying to correlate this with the overall data that we see across the city to be able to understand whether or not we can attribute this to our decrease in overall crime that we are presenting to SAPD.

So the the strategies, the strategies that that are part of this uh plan are designed to address violent street crime.

That's the categories that you see reported on in our report.

Um they're not designed to address property crime per se, um, or domestic violence, uh family violence.

Uh those require different strategies.

Um to the extent that overall violent crime is down in San Antonio, if it's violent street crime, uh, the ones that are represented in our report, um, then yeah, I think these strategies had up had very had a lot to do with it.

Um but again, they're not they're not targeted at the other on the violence side, the other sort of half of the equation is family violence.

Um, and and this this plan doesn't address family violence.

So of the 31,000 crimes against person that's listed, approximately how many do you think are in this category in 2025 there was 31,000 crimes against persons?

Would you be able to maybe we could follow up with that data?

What I'm trying the point that I'm trying to make is and in a convoluted way, sorry, is that this is maybe 20,000.

Let's just estimate maybe half of the the crimes against person that we see overall in our community, which is only a portion of our overall crime.

So last year in 2025, our total number of crime was 136,000 crimes that we reported.

And if we say this is maybe even less than 10 percent of the crime that we are seeing in general, and the solution only services 10 percent, it is a solution that seems to be working, but only for a portion of the crime that we are seeing.

Yeah, and so that's the kind of the convoluted point that I was trying to make.

Yeah.

And I and I I think that's fair.

I think that the um the focus on on this type of crime, violent street crime, is intense because it's it's um it's arguably the worst, right?

It's uh um impacts people's lives um to a significant degree.

100%.

Which is Maria, were you gonna add something to that?

I was just going to sorry, I was just going to say that the NIBER statistics are not a full representation of crime taking place in the community.

The NIBER statistics are utilized by the FBI to do comparisons between cities in the United States.

There are additional crimes that take place that are not captured in that, such as your local municipal ordinance violations, and then anything that's not in NIBER's group A is not shown there.

And so, to his point, the professor's point, the crime data we're looking at for this plan is not filtered or controlled or limited by the NIBER statistical definition.

So we're looking at calls for service, offense reports, and not all of that makes it into a NIBER statistic.

So it's certainly two different data sets and two different perspectives.

Okay, that's helpful clarification for me because I always look at this as our kind of tracking tool, so it makes me think that when we do the NIBA statistic, we should also have like this is what we're reporting, and also this is what we're actually using to make to for decision making purposes at SAPD.

So I think we should um get presented with both so we can better accurately understand how much violent crime actually is down overall rather than just in the siloed part of the presentation.

But all of that to say, I just kind of wanted to share that this is I I'm glad this is working for violence true crime, and you're right, that is a big challenge.

But a lot of the other issues that we see in the community have different root causes, and so we just want to make sure that's why we have the integrated community safety department that it is in an integrated reproach approach, and we are thinking strategically about how to use those resources and whether or not to say we need a hundred more officers on duty for a violent um for hot spot policing is still something we need to look at.

And the last question I'll ask before I hand it back over to you, because I know you want to say something, is if the one thing you mentioned is that a month after we still saw some there was a decrease in crime, but it wasn't as much as it was.

At one point, does it no longer have an effect?

Like at what point does it automatically go?

In each of those individual hotspots that get treated, crime returns to its pretreatment average after about 60 days.

It's like if you have a mosquito infestation and you just kill a little bit about it and then it goes away for a while, and the mosquitoes come back.

Absolutely.

Hotspots policing, the analogy that we use, it's like a fever reducer, you know, it's like an ibuprofen.

You know, when the ibuprofen wears off, your headache comes back, you know.

Yeah, unless you treat what's causing your headache to begin with.

Yeah.

So it that's why it's one of multiple strategies that that are employed to to address violent street crime.

I think that's just really important for us to remember.

All right, council member White.

I I agree with so much of what you just said, as well as the councilman, but but this is not an it's not an either-or.

And and yes, uh all these other things we talk about and and treating the root causes of crime, of course, are all very important, but you cannot deny the data in this report.

And I said it last year, and I'll say it again.

It it is government malpractice to look at a report like this and then not want to fund more officers uh to be patrolling the streets of San Antonio.

It it just is.

I mean, I mean the data, the data is right there.

So, yes, a holistic approach, I'm for it.

And yes, that can help prevent crime in in the years down the road.

But to prevent crime right now and take care of our citizens right now, we need more officers patrolling the streets.

And we just talked about the fire study that that the councilman um requested when the needs assessment, when that comes back, it's going to show probably some areas where we need more personnel or we need more equipment, right?

For our fire folks.

If we get that back, I think you're gonna be advocating for, hey, look, we need more fire personnel.

It says it right here in the report, or we need more equipment, it says it right here in the report.

We did a study a few years ago in 2023 that said we needed more officers.

The chief of police has said we need more officers to patrol the streets.

The data is right here.

Councilmember White, um, for time's sake, we can continue this debate, which I know we will have plenty of time to do uh when the resolution comes up.

Is that okay?

Yes, and I'll just say one more tiny thing if I can.

Um I know this relates to to violent crime, and you do bring up other crimes, um, which of course uh some of which I agree, more police on the street can't can't help some of these things, but property crime, for instance, I think which we see a lot downtown, um, which I know you all probably hear about in your districts as well, cars getting broken into and things like that.

Do we not think if somebody is about to turn down a street uh to go and break into a few cars, yet they saw an officer uh right there perhaps driving through the neighborhood, they would probably go somewhere else.

So I think we could um drastically impact our property crime as well with more patrol.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks, Councilmember White.

Uh go ahead, Councilmember McKee Ridge again.

Just a real quick request.

Um, because I'm wondering if it's possible to get um from our existing so from this is gonna be big data.

So I would like to know based off of the ARPA allocations that we made, based off of bond investments that we made, and based off of our consolidated uh our delegate agency funding over the past few years, where have investments been made the most?

So if we know uh especially for the nonprofits, what zip codes have they been serving and to what to what extent.

Um and maybe we can look at that and compare it to uh uh a map of where crime is happening and where crime has decreased.

And I'd like to know if any of those investments have played a role in uh reducing crime.

That would be very interesting to me.

Um and Dr.

Smith, you did just you did just say a little bit ago that the effects of the hot spotting will uh linger for about a month and then return by 60 days back to pre pre hospiting levels.

So, unless you create a police state in which a police is on every corner at all times, you're not gonna achieve permanent results by adding more police officers.

You won't.

You willing this debate for another.

So you need to make the long term interesting.

Literature on opportunity zone investments and things like that and their impact on crime.

Um, and we can pull together a few of those resources and we'll send them to Maria, and maybe she can get them to you.

That'd be great.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Smith.

Thank you, council members, for a great discussion.

Okay, you guys hard hard cut off at three 345 for the both of you.

It's hard, hard because we're gonna lose quorum.

So I want to decide whether or not to rush John through uh his presentation.

John, what do you think?

You got seven minutes before you lose quorum.

I mean, I can do it in seven minutes, but uh and we could still have discussion even without quorum, right?

Or no?

Because there's no action.

You could have discussion, sure, but it wouldn't be a meeting.

Yeah.

The meeting would end when you lose quorum, I guess what I'm saying.

Okay, John.

Just for what we're gonna do is you're gonna blaze through your presentation.

If we have comments, we'll send them to you.

And if those if councilman and I can stay, we'll just give them to you personally here while we present for folk whoever's presenting for item five.

We will not make it to um or sorry, the last item, whichever number that is.

Yeah, item five, we will not make it to item five today.

All right, John, go ahead.

Okay, I will uh I will get through this as quick as I can.

Um I'll start uh here at the map.

I'll go ahead and skip over a couple slides here.

And so basically, uh we did want to show you this this heat map.

This actually shows uh this is for critical call response, and you can see uh district five is is is easily the the highest volume for critical calls, uh, but three and two are definitely in the in that range as well.

Uh it kind of wraps around obviously that west and south side of the of this of the city.

Other about 90,000 calls, about 60, 60 percent that we receive every year are um our critical calls, and right now we're right about just under 95 percent for critical call response rate.

This just breaks down what uh all of our different enforcement types.

So basically it's first response, bites, dangerous, and aggressive, and then cruelty investigations.

Those are four sections that we work from with front with our officers.

And uh so when you look at these reports, this is actually uh I won't go through the process, but it's there for you guys to see the process once we receive a byte and what takes place.

Um I did want to point out um at the bottom there, real quickly, because uh you could look at this sheet and you could say, oh, severe the number percentage of severe bites are up.

Um I do want to make it uh a note there that you're not comparing apples to apples there.

The reason why is in December of 2024, we uh changed the definition of severe vibe, and actually what we did is we better defined it, and so we took officer discretion away when it came to identifying bites.

We basically said if it's this, then it's this, um, so that we could get a better um accurate picture.

So I know when you just look at that slide, it appears that severe bites is up, but um it's not apples to apples comparisons.

Um, and we also made it to where any bite to a child to the face is severe.

Um, and so that's a uh any moderate bite to a child to the face is now considered severe, which also increased that number.

So those are that's the reason why you see that increase.

I just want to make that clear so it doesn't uh that one kind of sticks out a little bit.

Uh when you move on to our dangerous dog investigations, uh again, there's the there's the process there for you all to review.

Uh our dangerous dog compliance rate, our goal is 80 percent.

Last year we did achieve 82 percent.

Uh when I gave you the memo last month, we had dipped down to about 70.

You could see it's already increased to about 74.8.

Um we have filled the two vacancies in our dangerous dog compliant or dangerous dog team, as well as we cross-trained some other first response uh officers to help get that up.

So we anticipate that that um that dangerous dog compliance rate gets back up above that 80 where where we've been uh historically.

And then the dangerous dog cases worked.

Uh, you could see we saw a significant increase from 24 to 25 whenever we increase the number of officers that were out in the field and and obviously educating and talk to our community about it.

We're right on right on that same pace again for FY26.

Uh cruelty investigations again.

Here's the process for our cruelty investigations.

Um, I just wanted to point out quickly um the it looks like uh well not look like it's definitely there.

You're gonna see this year we're on pace to almost double the number of actually probably will over double the number of cruelty cases filed.

Uh just I want to do point out that these are the cruelty cases that are um these are the district that the higher level cruelty cases that you're that we're seeing here.

We do have the uh municipal um local uh municipal ordinances that we write on for the more minor offenses, uh, but those that's not including in these numbers, these are just the ones that go to district court, and so uh we've obviously uh FY24 and 25.

We we've stayed at about half capacity for our cruelty team during both those fiscal years.

Uh we've improved, we've got uh vacancies filled, and uh we also have dedicated a supervisor to that team now, which they didn't have prior.

We just did that within the last year, um, which allowed us to put a little more focus on our cruelty cases, um, which is again it's been part of our strategic plan to do that.

Uh and then here's the last ACS slide.

I um this basically breaks down our staff.

We have 245 total positions, about 69 of those are um for our response, and so um we have 69 um total positions, and you can see the breakout there.

Um the vacancies are there on the far right.

So currently we have about we have four vacancies, uh, one with our first response, two with our bites, and then one cruelty.

Um that that 49 that says filled on first response.

I did want to point out that nine of those are trainees, so that means they are still with a training officer, still learning the job.

And then um I also wanted to point out that the next academy is scheduled for April the 7th, where we have an additional um seven uh first response cadets will be going through that, two dangerous dog officers and a cruelty investigator, and that will fill the um the vacancy in our cruelty uh position that you see there.

So that academy is starting.

Um we did provide you with some municipal courts uh citations.

I was gonna have them come up and actually go over their slides with you, but due to time, um the data is there and they are here uh and happy to answer questions.

Um, but these are the the this information came directly from municipal courts.

These last couple of slides that you see here with our with the citations, the number of filings you can see is just over 12,000.

And then it has the breakout of the top three for both criminal and civil violations that you see down there at the bottom.

Thanks, John.

Judge, is there anything you wanted to come up and quickly share about on this?

Sorry to rush you.

Good afternoon.

I I'm just here if you have any questions.

I one one on the last slide, I did want to point out that um uh these are fiscal year 25 filings.

That's when they were actually filed at the court.

So there's always a question about how come the court does not match what ace the numbers that ACS has, and it's because some of those fiscal year 25 filings include cases uh offenses that occurred in fiscal year 24.

Some of those fiscal year 25 cases won't actually be heard until fiscal year 26.

Um I just wanted to mention that.

The majority of the cases are being filed criminally now.

Um here is a breakdown.

I did cover this at the municipal court advisory committee meeting a couple of weeks ago.

We did break down the dismissals.

I know that there was a concern that judges were dismissing cases.

Um there is a process for that.

We need a motion from the prosecutor, and so we've broken that down a little bit.

So the some of them are from deferred disposition, which is probation, others are prosecutor recommends, so it's either compliance, uh part of a plea bargain, or um maybe an officer, ACS officer is no longer with the department.

Um we do have civil hearings at municipal court judges here.

We have magistrates that are on duty 247365.

In case an officer needs a seizure warrant signed, they can show up to the MAG court, and there is somebody that is available to sign those warrants and also give a setting for a hearing.

These are the monetary outcomes.

Uh, by law, we are it we are um obligated to take into account somebody's ability to pay.

We do have to give jail time credit, we have to offer community service hours, and in some instances the waiver of fine and court costs within the last couple of years on the more serious cases such as the bike cases, ACS does work with the prosecutor's office to create a bite report for the judge to review at sentencing.

So those cases usually have a much higher fine.

Okay.

Thank you so much, Judge.

Um, I know you all have to run, right?

You gotta go.

You gotta go too.

Okay.

So we will adjourn the meeting.

Councilman Cassidy, if you want to stay, we you can we can give our feedback.

Um so at 346 public safety meetings adjourned.

Um it's okay.

Um, we'll go ahead and council McCastillo, would you like to start with comments or questions?

Yes, uh, thank you, Chair.

Thank you, uh, John and Judge Obelo for the presentation.

Um, you know, I I think this is a really important uh uh agenda item for us to dive into a life loss to a vicious dog is just as tragic as losing one to a violent criminal on the street.

Uh, and I think that's why we need a continued investment in animal care service.

Uh pleased to hear that you all will have uh an additional cadets graduating to go out into the field and connect residents to resources in terms of seeing the increase of reported uh bites and aggressive animals.

In addition to what you stated, I'd like to believe that the public education campaign that Animal Care Service has done out in the community has also resulted in empowering residents to make reports, uh complete the affidavit, and so on and so forth.

Um I'm I'm pleased to see that with the the vacancies, particularly with the dangerous dogs, uh, that those are fully filled.

Um I I did want to highlight in terms of the ACS personnel, it's not there, um, but I know with events that you all do out in the community, I think there would be value in providing uh personnel slots to support with that community engagement that you are doing because the heat map that you laid out, yes, my district's um impacted the most, but this is a citywide issue, and I think uh investing in ACS and personnel will help us uh address this crisis that we're seeing out in our community.

Um, and I appreciate Judge Oblelo walking us through some of the citation uh uh pieces.