San Antonio’s hot spot policing strategy continues to show promising results, police officials and researchers said Tuesday.

Since the strategy started in January, reports of violent crime were down citywide 12.6% in the first six months of the year compared to the same time period last year.

The targeted, high-violence crime hot spots — in which officers simply park police vehicles with their emergency lights on at 15- to 20-minute intervals throughout the day — saw a 41.5% decrease in violent crime.

“The theory behind this strategy is if you can reduce violent crime in the most crime-producing areas, then we can then potentially move the needle across the entire city,” said Michael Smith, a UTSA criminology and criminal justice professor and director of the university’s Center for Applied Community and Policy Research. 

“That is indeed the pattern we’re seeing” during the first six months, said Smith, who led a team of researchers that developed and will continue help implement the plan.

Violent crimes — which include murder, aggravated assault, deadly conduct and robbery — were down citywide during that period except for robberies of businesses, which increased by 7%.

There were also areas surrounding some hot spots that saw increased violent crime, which could indicate crime is just moving outside of the hot spot, Smith noted while presenting a mid-year progress report to City Council’s Public Safety Committee, but “there’s no consistent evidence of displacement in the areas immediately around those being treated. In fact, most of those areas have benefited from the [hot spot] crime plan.”

The hot spot strategy is part of a broader plan to reduce violent crime that starts with increasing police officer visibility in high-crime areas.

Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) asked if SAPD Chief William McManus had heard feedback from his rank-and-file about serving hot spot duty.

“I’ve heard secondhand from a couple [of officers] that they don’t love it,” Kaur said.

“The crime plan is not a sexy … action-packed plan that officers would have fun doing,” McManus replied. “This is passive, on-scene activity, that once your 15 minutes is up, you go back into service. So, no, I don’t think everybody’s super excited about it. But the bottom line is: it works.”

It’s unclear if the string of six officer-involved shootings over the summer will impact the results of the next 60-day hot spot period. Data for July and August has been collected, but not yet analyzed.

The next phase of the Violent Crime Reduction Plan involves developing site-specific interventions for especially problematic hot spots. UTSA researchers and staff from various city departments and community partners are working to identify underlying conditions in the area that contribute to crime — be it physical, such as poor lighting, or service-based, like a lack of daycare or recreation opportunities.

Those solutions are slated to roll out early next year and UTSA will continue to track the impact on violent crimes, Smith said.

Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), a frequent critic of SAPD, has pushed for the city to move more quickly on this second phase.

“Does having police [turn] their lights on for 15 minutes address the root causes of crime? No,” McKee-Rodriguez told the San Antonio Report after the meeting. “We’re just delaying this inevitable realization” that addressing transportation, housing, economic opportunity and infrastructure prevents crime.

“We’re getting there, slowly but surely,” he said.

The third phase is focused on high-risk offenders who are responsible for the majority of violent crime in San Antonio, he said. “That’s called ‘focused deterrence.’ It’s designed to help break the cycle of violence among chronic and repeat violent offenders by offering them alternatives to the lifestyle that, for many of them, they’ve been in for most of their lives.”

During this phase, these offenders could be offered intensive rehabilitation programs or harsher prosecution.

It’s still too early to draw conclusions, Smith said.

“This is just a descriptive analysis, … when we get to the one-year point, we do more sophisticated modeling,” he said.

The most recent citywide crime statistics, which include data through September, show a 10.9% decrease in violent crime compared to the same time period last year, McManus told the committee.

The federal crime reporting tool that SAPD uses defines violent crimes, or crimes against persons, differently than the UTSA crime plan.

Overall, crime is up citywide by 1.5% due to an increase of property crimes — which continues to be driven by motor vehicle theft.

Still, positive results from the Violent Crime Reduction Plan and SAPD’s crime statistics is a “double hit” of good news, McManus said.

Here and nationally, cities are struggling to contain a rise in violent crime, Smith said.

“While we have initially flattened the curve of violent crime in San Antonio for the first six months of the crime plan, violent crime remains substantially higher in San Antonio than it was prior to the onset of COVID-19,” he said. “There’s a lot of work left to be done.”