SAN ANTONIO – In a unanimous decision, council members voted to postpone a resolution in todays city council meeting supporting the hiring of more officers in 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an issue of the fact that we don\u2019t have endless resources.\u201d said San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones.<\/p>\n
The City of San Antonio paid for an independent study in 2023 that recommended hiring 65 officers a year so they would have more time to patrol neighborhoods. This year, the city only hired 40 officers amid a budget shortfall.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou add the officers first, then you build the rest of the budget around it,\u201d said Councilman Marc Whyte.<\/p>\n
Whyte also pointed to a UTSA study that found officers on the ground significantly reduce crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more people can see that, they understand that we need more police on the streets of San Antonio,\u201d said Whyte.<\/p>\n
Others, like Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran, brought up a SAPD reports showing crime rates falling. She supported postponing the discussion to see if new technology and community programs could help instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we need more officers? I\u2019m pretty sure we will need more officers. Do we need to commit to a full 65? Not if we can get technology that has 30 officers doing what 65 can do,\u201d said Viagran.<\/p>\n
Viagran added that if push comes to shove, she will still prioritize manpower.<\/p>\n
The city will discuss the resolution at the first public safety committee meeting in May and will consider adopting a 2027 budget in September. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO – In a unanimous decision, council members voted to postpone a resolution in todays city council…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-232667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-san-antonio","9":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","10":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}