More than two years after then-freshman Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) submitted a request for it — and after some resistance from city staff — the City of San Antonio last week established an office outside the police department that focuses on preventing crime, city officials told the San Antonio Report.
The Office of Integrated Community Safety will function as an internal, mini-think tank dedicated to data-informed approaches to crime prevention.
Maria Vargas-Yates, recently hired as the city’s new public safety outcomes coordinator, will lead the eight-person office. The office is expected to be fully staffed in early April.
“I think this demonstrates that community safety is a priority,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “We’re going to do something a little bit out-of-the-box, we’re going to establish something that breaks the norms of traditional city procedure and we’re really going to invest in community safety through a lens of prevention and collaboration and interdepartmental coordination that we haven’t had historically.”
The office is responsible for “evaluating how city programs positively impact crime reduction by analyzing social conditions such as educational attainment, poverty and unemployment that may contribute to criminal behavior,” City Manager Erik Walsh wrote in a memo to department heads, San Antonio Police Department Chief William McManus and other key staff, and Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6), who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee.
City staff initially recommended against establishing a new office because the city has already taken steps toward a public health approach to address the root causes of crime. As proposed by McKee-Rodriguez, the office would have required additional funding.
However, the city manager ultimately decided the office could be staffed through existing positions from various departments to centralize oversight and implementation of crime prevention initiatives with no additional funding needed, Walsh told the San Antonio Report. It will be housed within the city manager’s office.
“We took a step back [and realized] there’s a little bit of structure that’s needed,” he said. “It just makes sense to pull them together.”
San Antonio is not the first city to centralize crime prevention into an office. The City of Dallas established the Office of Integrated Public Safety Solutions in 2020.
The office in San Antonio will oversee SAPD’s Violent Crime Reduction Plan, the broader Violence Prevention Strategic Plan led by the health department and the Good Neighbor Program, which focuses services and enforcement on properties that receive numerous 311 complaints and 911 calls.
The office also will inventory local programs that address recidivism and analyze data on 311 and 911 calls and re-arrest rates. Staff also will work on implementing relevant studies and research performed by institutions contracted by the city such as UTSA, which has criminologists studying the impact that non-law enforcement programs have on reducing crime as well as outcomes of criminal cases throughout the justice system.
Over the past two years, the city has hired a public safety outcomes coordinator and grants coordinator, both positions that were championed by McKee-Rodriguez and will now be housed in the Office of Integrated Community Safety. Four positions are dedicated to the Good Neighbor Program and two data analysts come from the city’s Information Technology Department to the new office, which will be located inside City Tower.
The office structure and name aren’t exactly what McKee-Rodriguez requested in 2022, but he told the San Antonio Report he was satisfied with the compromise that fulfilled a campaign promise.
“It’s doing enough of what I want that I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s the gist of what I wanted.”
The office will “work on both the programs that exist in the city, analyze their success, and also hopefully find some opportunities for creation of new programs,” McKee-Rodriguez said.
The councilman had requested that the city hire professional criminologists for his proposed office, but Walsh said that work will still be contracted out to UTSA or other organizations.
Deputy City Manager María Villagómez likened the new office’s role to that of the city’s chief housing officer, tasked with working across city departments, private and nonprofit partners as well as other governmental entities to improve housing affordability and reduce homelessness.
“There’s still responsibilities and programs [related to crime reduction] that other departments are running on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “In this office, we’ll be able to integrate those efforts so that way, we have a very clear path on how we’re impacting crime and improving the quality of life of our residents.”
