San Antonio’s homicide count has tumbled over the last two years, but city leaders still do not know exactly which programs are driving the drop. As officials finalize the FY27 budget, they face a hard choice about whether to lean into policing, expand public health interventions or try to do both while building the data tools to prove what actually works.
Data show the drop, but not the why
The numbers are clear, even if the explanation is not. San Antonio homicides fell about 8% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, and the city’s homicide rate now sits roughly 12% below pre pandemic levels, according to the San Antonio Report. 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 2024, with substantially larger reductions in neighborhoods receiving hotspot policing.
UTSA's work and what hot spots research says
UTSA criminologists have been embedded with the city and SAPD since the plan launched in 2023, publicly outlining how they measure the Violent Crime Reduction Plan and its hotspot strategy. The university has described the partnership in briefings, and the broader literature on hot spot policing, including peer reviewed work from the UTSA team, shows focused patrols can lower violence in treated micro areas while researchers warn lasting change usually requires place based problem solving and services alongside police visibility. See UTSA and related scholarship on hot spot policing in Sage Journals.
Public health programs also post big gains
Metro Health’s Regional Violence Prevention Strategic Plan, a mix of violence interruption, youth outreach and behavioral health services, has also been linked to steep drops: Metro Health officials say homicides are down 56% and shootings 46% since the plan began in 2024. Those competing success stories make budgeting fraught; an independent recommendation to hire 65 additional officers in FY27 remains on the table as councilmembers weigh which programs to fund. “We’re going to have to make a lot of tough decisions like this,” Councilmember Marc Whyte said at a June community health meeting.
Evaluation capacity is the sticking point
Researchers say the missing ingredient is clear metrics and staff to do this work. Without consistent evaluation capacity, officials must make spending choices based on broad trends rather than program level evidence. That problem is compounded by federal changes. Reporting from NPR documents major cuts to the CDC’s injury and violence prevention teams in 2025, a shift that undercut a potential grant path Metro Health hoped to use to hire evaluation staff. Analysts at the Council on Criminal Justice also caution against assuming a single cause for recent drops, noting that multiple social, policing and public health factors can move numbers in the same direction.
What to watch
The coming weeks of budget debate will show whether San Antonio bets on policing, prevention, or a mix of the two, and whether it finally funds the people and systems needed to know which investments actually saved lives. If the city wants to lock in the recent declines, local leaders and researchers argue, evaluation should be treated as a line item priority, not an afterthought.
.jpg){kind=link}