The City of San Antonio will receive a three-year, $6.25 million federal grant to pay for 50 police officers that will be hired this year, officials announced last week.

It’s the first time since 2020 that San Antonio has received the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant. This year, San Antonio is one of four cities awarded the maximum funding for 50 officers along with Cincinnati, Houston and Chicago.

It’s still unclear why the Department of Justice selected San Antonio to receive the maximum grant this year after it was passed over in recent years.

“We haven’t gotten any feedback yet” on San Antonio’s grant application, City Manager Erik Walsh said. “All we got was the announcement.”

That grant funding for the 50 officers, part of a five-year plan to add 360 officers over five years, was already anticipated in the city’s 2024 budget.

“Reducing crime in our communities starts with backing law enforcement with the resources they need,” U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) said in a joint news release with U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo). “I’ve been a proud supporter of the COPS grant program and am pleased that San Antonio will receive the maximum grant amount this year to hire additional police officers.”

If San Antonio hadn’t received the full grant, the city would have had to delay cadet classes to compensate, Walsh said. “So there’s no extra money; [the grant] fits perfectly in the budget.”

The grant allows the city to hire police officers faster, said Deputy City Manager María Villagómez.

Another nearly $70,000 grant through the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act will be used by the city to improve delivery and access to mental health and wellness services for police.

That funding will be used to help implement a mental health and wellness work plan for officers that the department and police union are still working on, Villagómez said. The collaborative committee working on the plan was established after a spike in officer suicides last year.

The grant will be used to kick off the short-term strategies identified by the committee, including increased availability of psychologists and providing officers with financial advice, she said.

“As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, I worked hard to keep both these programs fully funded. We’re seeing the results of that today right here in San Antonio,” Cuellar stated. “I stand with the men and women in blue, and I will continue to provide them with the resources they need to do their jobs well.”

The city’s fiscal year 2024 budget added 117 total police officers to the department, the largest batch of approved positions in the city’s history, including 100 patrol officers aimed at decreasing the time patrol spends responding to calls and increasing time spent patrolling and building relationships with the community.

Meanwhile, San Antonio police continue to partner with UTSA to implement the Violent Crime Reduction Plan, a three-phase approach that targets the city’s most violent areas.

The first phase, a hot spot policing strategy, has shown promising preliminary results, so far, according to UTSA researchers.

The city highlighted the violence reduction plan as part of its application for the federal grant as well as the new Good Neighbor Program, which targets residential properties that receive enough minor criminal and code compliance violations that they can be classified as a chronic nuisance, Villagómez said.

“We’ll be collaborating with other departments to be able to address those [911] calls,” she said, which includes connections to mental health and minor home repair services. “Those [50] officers will be assisting us … as we are implementing the Good Neighbor Program.”

Andrea Drusch contributed to this article.