SAN ANTONIO – For the first time in over a decade, San Antonio could log fewer than 100 homicides.
“I don’t want to jinx it,” San Antonio Police Chief Jesse Salame cautioned as he made the prediction while presenting the latest crime numbers to the Public Safety Committee.
From January through September of this year, San Antonio Police reported 66 homicides, down 20% from the 83 during the same period in 2025.
SAPD reported 106 homicides at the end of last year. The last time the city was under the 100 homicide threshold was 2015, when SAPD logged 94 cases.
The homicide numbers Salame provided the Public Safety Committee were actually even higher, with 80 homicide offenses reported for the first nine months of 2026.
However, that’s because SAPD included negligent manslaughter and justifiable homicides cases, when it normally just includes murders and non-negligent manslaughter cases in its statistics.
Negligent manslaughter cases might include deaths from hunting accidents, cleaning guns, or children playing with guns.
Justifiable homicide is defined as “the killing of a perpetrator of a serious criminal offense by a peace officer in the line of duty, or the killing, during the commission of a serious criminal offense, of the perpetrator by a private individual.” It is not considered a crime.
Homicides spiked in 2022 when 53 migrants were killed in a sweltering tractor trailer on the South Side. However, even excluding their deaths, it still would have been the peak.
The number has been coming down since then, and the current drop is part of an overall 6% drop in crime, according to Salame’s presentation to the Public Safety Committee.
As for why homicides are dropping this year, Salame said it’s part a nationwide trend. The Council on Criminal Justice reported an 18% drop in homicides in large U.S. cities in the first half of 2026.
“There’s a lot of proactive work that goes in,” Salame said. “I certainly think that some of the work that’s being done, arresting folks that are committing the shootings, drive-bys. But it is — nationally, it’s down.”
San Antonio has also been following a violent crime reduction plan, designed by University of Texas at San Antonio criminologists, since 2023, which includes addressing “hotspots” with additional police presence and tackling the root issues of crime at some locations.
“I know that we’ve seen a decrease and it’s been a sustained decrease, not just in violent crimes, but in property crimes,” Salame said of the department tackling the hotspots.
Bennie Price, CEO of Big Mama’s Safe House, thinks funding for gun violence prevention played a big part in lowering homicide rates across the country.
“By funding being placed, now you’re starting to see the impact of that funding. It’s not gonna happen overnight,” he said.
Asked about the city’s falling homicide rate, Price said “it makes me feel really, really good to see some of the fruits of your labor really, working and saving lives.”
However, he said 100 homicides is still too many. His group doesn’t want any in the city.
“For me, it’s not a success, because within that 100, how many of them could have been prevented?” he said.
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