SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio is working to crack down on crime ‘hot spots,’ which are areas of the city impacted the most by violent crime.
Phase one included officers in those areas during peak crime hours with lights on for at least 15 minutes.
The city, UTSA and San Antonio Police looked into the data collected and are now focused on potential solutions.
The Southeast side of San Antonio is home for Rachel Rohrer.
“We’ve been here 36 years, and we’ll be here until the end,” Rohrer said.
With her love for her neighborhood comes hope for change especially regarding nearby crime issues.
“We have not only The Rosemont [at Highland Park], but we also have homeless people. We had a new roof put on a house maybe about less than a year ago, we found two bullets. You hear shots almost nightly,” Rohrer said.
The Rosemont at Highland Park is one area UTSA is calling a crime ‘hot spot.’
Data from their Criminology and Criminal Justice Departments analyzed these categories for each hot spot area.
The apartment complex is the only one to rank top 10 for violent crime incidents, arrests and calls for service.
It’s mainly for those reasons the city’s Public Safety Committee said they’re focusing on the Rosemont at Highland Park, but neighbors in and around the area say they want to see more done to help their safety.
“We have a lot of elderly in this community, and then they have maybe grandchildren or their sons or daughters living with them. But we all deserve to have peace and quiet and especially safety,” President of Highland Park Neighborhood Erin Gallegos Reid said.
The area is part of the second phase of the city’s violent crime reduction plan.
Recommendations include addressing roaming and stray animals, monitoring criminal activity as well as adding lights and fixing sidewalks among other things.
Gallegos Reid said she would like to see something additional added.
“Sidewalks and lights aren’t going to do anything, because the crimes are often done in the summers, when the daylight lasts longer, we need actual patrols,” Gallegos Reid said.
These recommendations are set to be implemented before December 2024.
UTSA’s research team will report results every six months.
The apartment complex is in District Two. We reached out to Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez to take these concerns to him.
He was unavailable Monday before our deadline but did address the plan on Friday when it was brought before the Public Safety Committee.
“On this site, there’s three lights to be installed. And I do want to reemphasize that they were identified a couple years ago as warranted lights under the street lighting index that I proposed back in 2021 meaning that we could look hypothetically at every single hot spot in the city and see if there is an exist a warranted street light there and we could work on applying those as a priority,” Councilman McKee-Rodriguez said.
