Crime in San Antonio increased 2% overall last year compared to 2022, according to data presented by the San Antonio Police Department on Tuesday.
While violent crime and “crimes against society” like animal cruelty and drug violations were down, property crime increased by 6.6%.
An increase in vehicle thefts drove the property crime increase. More than 19,200 vehicles were reported stolen in 2023, 53% more than the previous year.
“Much of it was related to that TikTok video that came out earlier in the year,” SAPD Chief William McManus told city council’s Public Safety Committee, referencing viral videos that challenges people to steal certain models of Hyundais and Kias while showing them how to exploit the cars’ designs.
“Many of those vehicles that are stolen, they’re not stolen for just joy rides — matter of fact, most of them are not. They are stolen to commit other crimes,” McManus said.
Nearly 2,000 Hyundai Elantras were reported stolen in San Antonio last year, but Ford F-Series trucks also remain a common target with 1,650 reported stolen.
“The good news is that at least the violent crime statistics are down,” said Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6), who chairs the committee. “But we can’t spike the ball, we’ve got to stay focused and make sure that we’re continuing to work on violent crime and of course [get] property crime numbers down.”
Violent crimes, or crimes against people, decreased by 9.6%. It’s still unclear whether this citywide decrease is a result of the Violent Crime Reduction Plan.
The first phase of the plan that targets 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 in the first six months of 2023.
The next phase of the plan, developing site-specific interventions for especially problematic hot spots, is underway, Deputy City Manager María Villagómez said.
UTSA researchers and staff from various city departments and community partners are working to identify underlying conditions in hot spots that contribute to crime — be it physical, such as poor lighting, or service-based, like a lack of daycare or recreation opportunities.
“We’re on the first steps of that [phase] and starting with one location,” Villagómez said. “Eventually we will expand it to other locations in the city.”
The broader Violence Prevention Strategic Plan, a collaboration between SAPD and the city’s health department, was crafted last year. The five-year plan focuses on four priority areas — youth-on-youth violence, gun violence, sexual violence and domestic violence — and uses a public health approach to tackle those issues rather than one that uses law enforcement alone.
Earlier this month, the City of San Antonio and Bexar County released a community-wide Public Safety Action Plan aimed at reducing violent crime committed by people who have previously committed crimes. The plan identifies several gaps in the system and ways the city and county can close them.
As part of the plan, SAPD wants to increase the community’s trust and engagement with the department.
One of the challenges SAPD faces in making arrests is a lack of people coming forward to report violent crime, McManus said.
We need “more witnesses reporting what they know to police and we would be able to close a lot more cases a lot more quickly than we do right now,” he said. “They’re afraid to [come forward] for a variety of reasons and understandably so.”
