Julie Melchor has lived in different areas of San Antonio for 40 years. She’s had her car stolen twice — once on the South Side and once in the Medical Center— and her car broken into once.
Melchor had just paid off her 2014 BMW when it was stolen in January 2022. She got it back only after a call from a towing company that had confiscated the vehicle due to a parking issue.
“I thought I was living in a safe area,” she said about the Medical Center.
“Honestly I feel like I need to move out of here and go to a safer area, but I don’t know if I can manage to do that,” she said. “When you’re looking at real estate in other parts of town, you don’t know what goes on there. It’s kind of hard to know.”
While violent crime has decreased in San Antonio by 12.6% this year, crime was up overall by 1.5% through October, an increase that is largely “due to motor vehicle thefts,” City Manager Erik Walsh said during a November CityFest panel about How San Antonio is preparing for record growth.
According to data from SAPD, the number of vehicle thefts, or stolen cars, has doubled since 2021: 17,298 people reported their vehicles stolen between January and Nov. 30 this year, compared to 12,102 people in 2022 and 8,766 in 2021. And the number of car burglaries, or break-ins, has also increased: This year, 19,364 people reported a car break-in — which is lower than the 21,301 reports in 2022, but an increase over the 16,939 car burglaries reported the year before.
“I believe San Antonio is safe,” Walsh said in November, adding that improving the city’s visible police presence will help turn the numbers around. “Increasing that visibility factor affects a lot of things. It can deter crime [and] provide a faster response time when something happens.
“Given the growth of the city that is happening and will continue to happen, we’ve got to make sure we step that up.”
As San Antonio continues to grow, keeping the community safe from crimes like vehicle theft will need to be approached proactively, Walsh said.
“There are plenty of cities that fall behind. … It’s really hard to catch up, so we’re trying to stay ahead of the curve,” he said.
Roughly eight months after her first car was stolen, Melchor’s 2013 Lexus was broken into in broad daylight in her gated neighborhood. The gate had been broken for a while, but she didn’t expect someone to break into her car at 1 p.m. in the afternoon.
Ever since then, she keeps her car inside the garage. If it’s outside, the car doors are locked and windows rolled up.
Melchor sees posts from her neighbors in the Medical Center on the NextDoor neighborhood social network “almost every day, it seems like,” saying their Kias or Hyundais were stolen.
Walsh said the city’s “hot spot” policing plan has contributed to a more than 40% decrease in violent crime in hot spots this year — a good sign — and that the city’s focus moving forward is on growing the police department and making sure officers’ time is used well.
“Let’s have 60% proactive time, and 40% of that officer’s time spent on call,” Walsh said in the CityFest panel. “We’ll need to add 360 officers over the next three to five years.”
Walsh also pointed to Metro Health’s violent crime prevention program as a proactive approach to bringing down crime in the city.
Recent crime trends show that juveniles make up a large number of auto theft crimes in Bexar County. Officials have worried about a rise in juvenile crime beyond pre-pandemic levels this year, as teens whose learning was affected by the pandemic make up a chunk of teens arrested for these crimes.
Nationally, crime rates are starting to return to what they were pre-pandemic, said Colton Daniels, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at St. Mary’s University, adding that there are many reasons for an increase in crime rates like the one San Antonio has seen.
It’s also “the easiness of it,” he said about vehicle thefts: “It’s a very quick crime. You can do it, get away, be out and done in under a minute in some cases. What is the risk and what is the potential reward?”
Due to inflation and rising housing costs, people are finding it “increasingly difficult to afford everyday necessities,” Daniels said, leading to more desperation. “There’s a greater demand on providing presents and food.”
But while some steal to make ends meet, it leaves victims like Melchor in a financial bind.
Melchor said she would like to see a fund to help victims of theft or burglary. When her car was stolen in 2022, she spent hundreds of dollars on towing it after it was recovered, and on and a new key fob.
“I’ve had two stolen cars and one car was burglarized,” she said. “It left me in a bad way financially.”
While vehicle thefts and burglaries have increased, city data shows the number of people arrested for breaking into vehicles and stealing cars has declined compared to previous years.
According to SAPD, 151 people have been arrested for burglary of vehicles this year, and 156 have been arrested for stealing cars.
Last year, slightly more people were arrested: 198 were arrested for break-ins in 2022, and 268 were arrested in 2021.
In 2022, 169 were arrested for stealing a car and 179 were arrested in 2021.
Those low numbers may be because “smart” criminals engaging in theft will avoid confrontation, Daniels said.
“[They’ll] flee immediately, because … as soon as there’s confrontation, it gets bumped up to a felony robbery,” he said.
SAPD said its Property Crime Task Force is using “intelligence-driven tactics” to make arrests and “thwarting would-be break-ins and other property crimes.”
To avoid becoming a victim of vehicle theft, SAPD recommends parking in well-lit areas, removing or hiding valuables inside of vehicles, locking cars and not leaving key fobs inside, avoiding distractions when walking outside and adding a camera surveillance system in your vehicle.
