SAN ANTONIO – Overall crime in San Antonio declined more than 13% in 2025, according to data presented Tuesday by Police Chief William McManus to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee.
The San Antonio Police Department reported 124,314 crimes from January through November, down from 143,529 during the full year of 2024.
“Nothing but good news as far as the crime stats go,” McManus said.
Crimes against people — which include assault, homicide, kidnapping, human trafficking and sex offenses — dropped 9%, from 31,180 cases in 2024 to 28,361 this year.
Crimes against property saw the largest decline, falling 18.1%, from 100,457 to 82,232 cases. Property crimes include burglary, robbery, arson, vandalism and motor vehicle theft.
Crimes against society increased 15.4%, rising from 11,892 cases last year to 13,721 in 2025. Those offenses include drug violations, weapons offenses, animal cruelty, gambling and obscenity-related crimes.
McManus said the increase reflects more enforcement activity rather than a rise in criminal behavior.
“Crimes against society — because they’re up, everybody thinks it’s a bad thing,” he said. “Well, they’re up because we’re making more arrests in those areas.”
Assistant Chief Jesse Salame said crime trends are influenced by multiple factors and cannot be attributed to a single cause.
“The reality is there is never really one factor that points to crime going down,” Salame said.
Police also reported improvements in response times and call volume. SAPD received fewer emergency and non-emergency calls in 2025 compared with the previous two years.
Emergency response times improved to an average of 5 minutes and 29 seconds, down from 5 minutes and 56 seconds in 2024 and 6 minutes and 20 seconds in 2023.
Non-emergency response times dropped to 18 minutes and 35 seconds, the fastest in at least three years.
McManus credited the improvement to increased staffing.
“Two ways to decrease response times are to add more officers and reduce the number of calls we respond to,” he said, “and we’ve been adding officers.”
SAPD officials said crime data reported under the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is not final and may be adjusted throughout the year due to reclassification, ongoing investigations or late reporting by victims.
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