Metro Well being offered new knowledge at a Neighborhood Well being Committee assembly exhibiting declines in shootings, homicides and different violent crimes since launching San Antonio’s regional violence prevention technique.
However with town getting into what officers have described as a tough price range cycle, council members shortly turned to a distinct query: Which applications are literally driving these outcomes?
The division reported violent crime charges declined throughout each main class it tracked between 2022 and 2025, together with a 56% drop in homicides, a 46% decline in shootings and smaller decreases in assaults and sexual violence.
Officers highlighted town’s five-year Regional Violence Prevention Strategic Plan and the Stand Up SA violence interruption program as key parts of its public well being method to lowering violence, which operates on an roughly $11.5 million annual price range.
Officers burdened, nevertheless, that the enhancements can’t be instantly attributed to anybody initiative. Violence prevention administrator Erica Haller-Stevenson stated a number of public security efforts — together with SAPD’s hotspot policing technique, problem-oriented place-based policing and Metro Well being’s prevention applications — have been carried out throughout the identical time interval, making it unimaginable to isolate the affect of any single intervention.
That caveat grew to become the central focus of the committee’s dialogue.
As metropolis leaders put together for what has been described as one among San Antonio’s most difficult price range cycles in years, District 10 Councilmember Marc Whyte questioned how they might decide which violence prevention applications have been producing the best return on taxpayer {dollars} if officers couldn’t instantly join particular person initiatives to broader declines in violent crime.
“We received robust fiscal occasions right here within the metropolis proper now,” Whyte stated. “If this $11 million [budget] was minimize to $7 [million] or $8 [million], what would you wish to be certain that we maintain?”
Exhausting to measure
Metro Well being officers stated they can’t at the moment calculate a return on funding for particular person applications. As a substitute, Haller-Stevenson stated public well being interventions are evaluated in a different way than conventional policing methods.
Whereas legislation enforcement can usually examine crime charges earlier than and after a tactic is deployed in a selected space, she stated public well being applications measure whether or not circumstances enhance throughout a whole inhabitants over time, making it tough to attribute citywide tendencies to anybody effort.
She pointed to Stand Up SA — town’s violence interruption program that deploys outreach employees with lived expertise to mediate conflicts, mentor folks at excessive threat of gun violence and join them with companies—as one instance.
“What we do know is that 488 violent conflicts have been interrupted in fiscal 12 months 2025,” Haller-Stevenson stated.
These interventions, she stated, symbolize conflicts that had the potential to escalate into shootings even when they can’t be statistically linked to town’s general decline in violent crime.
Whyte acknowledged that community-based violence intervention is inherently tougher to measure than policing ways, however stated council members will want higher data as they start engaged on the price range.
“We’re going to need to make a variety of robust selections like this,” Whyte stated. “We’re not going to have the ability to do every little thing that we’re doing proper now transferring ahead.”
Return on funding
Different council members argued that uncertainty mustn’t diminish the worth of prevention efforts.
District 5 Councilmember Teri Castillo urged colleagues to contemplate the function these applications play in stopping violence earlier than it happens by connecting residents with mentors, employment alternatives and different assist earlier than they grow to be concerned in violence.
Committee Chair Ric Galvan (D6) stated the dialogue highlighted the necessity for higher analysis instruments to assist future councils perceive which investments are having the best impacts. He requested whether or not extra grant funding may assist town measure the effectiveness of its violence prevention technique.
Haller-Stevenson stated Metro Well being had hoped to safe grant funding for a devoted workers member to trace implementation of the regional violence prevention technique, gather knowledge from accomplice organizations and consider outcomes throughout town, however these grants by no means materialized.
“The Workplace of Damage and Violence Prevention at CDC was dismantled,” Haller-Stevenson informed council members. “Just about all federal funding is popping out of the Division of Justice.”
She stated the remaining federal funding alternatives are largely geared towards legislation enforcement and court-based initiatives slightly than public well being violence prevention applications.
The applications mentioned Thursday have been largely constructed throughout years of increasing metropolis funding in violence prevention.
Following a document variety of intimate accomplice homicides in 2018, San Antonio designated home violence companies as a precedence and considerably elevated funding for prevention efforts.
With town now making ready for a tough price range cycle, council members indicated these investments — as soon as seen as important — may face nearer scrutiny than they’ve in years.
