SAN ANTONIO \u2013 For the first time in over a decade, San Antonio could log fewer than 100 homicides. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to jinx it,\u201d San Antonio Police Chief Jesse Salame cautioned as he made the prediction while presenting the latest crime numbers to the Public Safety Committee.<\/p>\n
From January through September of this year, San Antonio Police reported 66 homicides, down 20% from the 83 during the same period in 2025. <\/p>\n
SAPD reported<\/a> 106 homicides at the end of last year.<\/a> The last time the city was under the 100 homicide threshold was 2015, when SAPD logged 94 cases.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n However, that\u2019s because SAPD included negligent manslaughter and justifiable homicides cases, when it normally just includes murders and non-negligent manslaughter cases in its statistics<\/a>.<\/p>\n Negligent manslaughter cases might include deaths from hunting accidents, cleaning guns, or children playing with guns. <\/p>\n Justifiable homicide<\/a> is defined as \u201cthe 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.\u201d It is not considered a crime.<\/p>\n Homicides spiked in 2022 when 53 migrants<\/a> were killed in a sweltering tractor trailer on the South Side. However, even excluding their deaths, it still would have been the peak. <\/p>\n The number has been coming down since then, and the current drop is part of an overall 6% drop in crime, according to Salame\u2019s presentation to the Public Safety Committee. <\/p>\n As for why homicides are dropping this year, Salame said it\u2019s part a nationwide trend. The Council on Criminal Justice reported an 18% drop<\/a> in homicides in large U.S. cities in the first half of 2026. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of proactive work that goes in,\u201d Salame said. \u201cI certainly think that some of the work that\u2019s being done, arresting folks that are committing the shootings, drive-bys. But it is \u2014 nationally, it\u2019s down.\u201d<\/p>\n San Antonio has also been following a violent crime reduction plan<\/a>, designed by University of Texas at San Antonio criminologists, since 2023, which includes addressing \u201chotspots<\/a>\u201d with additional police presence and tackling the root issues of crime at some locations<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that we\u2019ve seen a decrease and it\u2019s been a sustained decrease, not just in violent crimes, but in property crimes,\u201d Salame said of the department tackling the hotspots.<\/p>\n Bennie Price, CEO of Big Mama\u2019s Safe House, thinks funding for gun violence prevention played a big part in lowering homicide rates across the country. <\/p>\n \u201cBy funding being placed, now you\u2019re starting to see the impact of that funding. It\u2019s not gonna happen overnight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Asked about the city\u2019s falling homicide rate, Price said \u201cit makes me feel really, really good to see some of the fruits of your labor really, working and saving lives.\u201d<\/p>\n However, he said 100 homicides is still too many. His group doesn\u2019t want any in the city.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it\u2019s not a success, because within that 100, how many of them could have been prevented?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Read also:<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 For the first time in over a decade, San Antonio could log fewer than 100…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3084,294,108147,672,82,84,83,632],"class_list":["post-475068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-city-hall","tag-crime","tag-jesse-salame","tag-police","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-sapd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475068","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=475068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}