Local voters, elected officials and organizations of diverse political thought are coming together to vote against Proposition A, an amendment to the San Antonio City Charter that will be on the May 6 municipal ballot. Why are so many across the political spectrum unified in their opposition to Prop A? The answer is simple: Prop A is an all-or-nothing ballot item.
Each item in Proposition A merits its own up or down vote; however, that is not possible because supporters of the proposition lumped all the items together. If Proposition A passes, crime could increase, negatively impacting safety, quality of life, and job creation and retention. For those reasons and more, we join numerous community members and groups in voting against Proposition A.
Proposition A spans 13 pages and amends 15 sections of our city charter, ranging from the creation of a justice director (who cannot have law enforcement experience) to eliminating arrests for certain crimes. Those crimes include, but are not limited to, theft of property or service with a value up to $750, graffiti offenses valued up to $2,500 per offense, simple assault and voyeurism. Police officers take an oath to enforce the law of the state of Texas, and local ballot measures preventing officers from having the discretion to arrest violate their oath and fail the basic test of good governance.
San Antonio City Attorney Andy Segovia has stated that five out of six of Prop A’s provisions are unenforceable by the city because they violate state law. Decriminalizing abortion and marijuana possession, specifically, appear to be included in Prop A to distract from the remainder of the charter amendment by leveraging national and divisive ideology. You don’t change state law with local ballot measures — you do so by getting the Texas Legislature to enact state legislation.
Under Prop A, an individual would have the ability to use a library card when a police officer is attempting to identify someone who may have committed a crime. We have two issues with that. First, it undermines a police officer’s ability to simply identify someone. At a time of rising crime, isn’t it better to streamline the process so that the officer may be freed up to go back to protecting our community? Second, If someone is committing a crime in our neighborhood, the public has the right to know who is committing the crime, and a valid ID would help achieve that goal.
Advocates of Prop A have made the argument that it should not be a big deal to remove a police officer’s discretion, requiring them to cite an offender instead of making an arrest, since the offender will still have to go to court. To take this position shows a complete disregard for the victims of these crimes. Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s reasons for opposing Prop A should resonate with individual voters and business owners alike. In a recent interview with KSAT-TV, he said Prop A will ignore “victims [of crimes], from small businesses to nonprofits, to really any working family who wakes up to a smashed car window.”
Mayor Nirenberg is not alone in opposing Prop A. Both moderate Republicans and Democrats recognize that safe neighborhoods and graffiti-less fences and buildings do not run along party lines. There is no better evidence of this than the long list of elected officials and organizations from diverse political backgrounds who oppose Prop A.
Proposition 47 in California, passed in 2014, downgraded some non-violent property crimes and some simple drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. One ingredient in Prop 47 was changing theft of property valued at $950 or less from an arrestable offense to a cite-and-release offense. That is comparable to the Prop A language of theft of property of $750 or less. We believe that one downgrade was behind the 9% rise in larceny thefts since the proposition was passed. The bottom line is if you incentivize something, you will get more of it.
Last week, The San Francisco Standard reported on the closure of a Whole Foods “flagship” grocery store just one year after its opening due to “deteriorating street conditions around drug use and crime near the grocery store.” San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey linked the Whole Foods closure to San Francisco’s police shortage and said he would introduce new legislation to amend the City Charter and get the police department fully staffed. The Standard had previously reported that the department’s 1,537 officers “fell well short of its goal of having 2,100 members on the force.”
In a time when recruitment of police is a challenge, we do not want to pass a ballot measure in San Antonio that could make it even harder to recruit officers. And let’s not turn a blind eye to the part of that story about businesses closing down due to lawlessness. Our business and elected leaders travel the world trying to recruit the relocation of businesses to San Antonio that create high-paying jobs. The message we send with the passage of Prop A will be counterproductive to those economic development efforts.
Here is the bottom line: vote against Prop A as it appears on the ballot. It’s unenforceable, violates state law and could encourage more crime as we have seen in other cities that have passed similar measures. Then, as a city, let us come together to have a rational conversation about how to make San Antonio a safer and more prosperous place to live.
