San Antonio’s homicide decline is clear — it's less clear why 32%
By Diego Medel40%
7/24/2026, 5:25:18 PM
Topics: Homicide Rate, Crime Reduction, Public Health, Budgeting, Policing Strategies, Violence Prevention
Keywords: Budget, Cdc, Center For Disease Control And Prevention, Council On Criminal Justice, Councilmember Marc Whyte, District 10, Ernesto Lopez, Homicide Rate, Homicides, Marc Whyte, Metro Health, Pandemic, Regional Violence Prevention Strategic Plan, San Antonio, San Antonio Police Department, Sapd, Top Story, Trump, Type Daily, University Of Texas At San Antonio, Utsa, Violent Crime, Violent Crime Reduction Plan, Violent Street Crime, Wc 750 1000
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including False Dilemma, Availability Heuristic, and Appeal to Authority, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 16.4% saturation with 106 hits. Analysis detected 842 faulty-reasoning hits from 647 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.1% and a BS Rank of 32% (14,891 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 68.00% of the article peer group.
San Antonio homicides fell another 8% during the first half of 2026 compared with the same period last year, according to a new Council on Criminal Justice analysis, extending a decline that has now pushed the city’s homicide rate 12% below pre-pandemic levels.
The latest report builds on a dramatic decline recorded last year.
At the midpoint of 2025, San Antonio homicides were down 20% from the same period in 2024 but only about 3% below 2019 levels.
The continued decline comes as two major evaluations released this year have documented positive results from different parts of San Antonio’s violence reduction strategy, while raising a question city leaders are increasingly confronting as they prepare next year’s budget: Which investments are driving the city’s progress?
In March, University of Texas at San Antonio criminologists evaluating the city’s Violent Crime Reduction Plan reported that homicides declined 18.5% and violent street crime fell 21.1% citywide in 2025 compared with the previous year.
The evaluation also found substantially larger reductions in the neighborhoods receiving hotspot policing, supporting evidence that the strategy was reducing violence in targeted areas.
Launched in 2023 in partnership with the San Antonio Police Department, the plan combines hotspot policing, problem-oriented place-based policing and a forthcoming focused deterrence strategy aimed at reducing violence in the city’s highest-crime areas.
Three months later, Metro Health reported that citywide homicides had fallen 56% and shootings 46% since launching its Regional Violence Prevention Strategic Plan in 2024.
Unlike the police evaluation, which examined year-over-year changes associated with a policing strategy, Metro Health assessed longer-term trends tied to a public health approach that includes violence interruption, youth outreach, domestic violence prevention and behavioral health programs.
Together, the evaluations suggest multiple evidence-based strategies are contributing to lower violence, but they also highlight the difficulty of determining how much credit belongs to any single program.
What now?
That uncertainty carries real consequences in budget season.
During a June Community Health Committee meeting Councilmember Marc Whyte (D10) said looming budget constraints mean council members will have to decide which violence prevention programs to keep, even if officials cannot isolate which initiative is the most impactful.
“We’re going to have to make a lot of tough decisions like this,” Whyte said.
“We’re not going to be able to do everything that we’re doing right now moving forward.”
San Antonio is already confronting that tension as officials prepare next year’s budget.
Whyte has argued the city should stay on track with an independent recommendation to hire 65 additional police officers in FY27, pointing to UTSA research showing hotspot policing reduced violence in targeted areas.
But the study’s lead researcher cautioned that while increased police presence can suppress crime in the short term, lasting reductions also require addressing the underlying conditions that contribute to violence.
At the same time, the city has struggled to build the evaluation capacity Lopez said is necessary to answer those questions.
Metro Health officials said they had hoped to secure federal funding for a dedicated staff member to evaluate the city’s Regional Violence Prevention Strategic Plan, collect data from partner organizations and measure outcomes across the city.
Those plans never materialized after the federal Office of Injury and Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was dismantled in the second Trump administration, eliminating the grant opportunity the department had hoped to pursue.
Without additional evaluation capacity, officials have to make future funding decisions using broad crime trends and program-level metrics rather than clear evidence of each strategy's contribution.
San Antonio has evidence that homicides and other violent crime continue to decline, and multiple evidence-based strategies appear to be contributing.
What remains harder to answer as city leaders weigh next year’s budget is how much each contributed — and how that should shape the city’s next round of public safety investments.
Analysis
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