San Antonio tracked other major cities nationwide, as new policing techniques cut into the city's murder rate in 2017, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Preliminary figures from the San Antonio Police Department show 126 murders in the city in 2017, down from 149 in 2016. And that 2017 figure includes the murders of 10 illegal immigrants who died in a bungled smuggling attempt in July.
Police officials nationwide credit 'targeted' policing, and focusing on gun violence in specific neighborhoods, for reductions in crime seen nationwide last year. As in other cities, the vast majority of San Antonio's 'street murders,' excluding crimes of passion like the murder-suicide on the city's northwest side last week,' occurred in a handful of known neighborhoods, mainly on the east, northeast, and west sides.
But San Antonio also saw an increase in senseless, tragic murders of children, including the young boy shot to death at a fast food restaurant on the northeast side, the gang-related murder of a three year old boy inside his east side home, the 10 year old girl shot in her home by a drive by gunman on Thanksgiving Day, and the four year old boy who was shot as he rode in his parents' car on a southwest side street.
Suspects in all four of those cases were solved by the arrests of suspects, and criminologists say crimes like that indicate gang structures are fraying, largely due to successful police work targeting the most violent offenders.
The 126 murders are far below the 300 murders reported annually in the early 1990s, and police say if you are not involved in illegal activity or are part of criminal organizations, your chances of being murdered in San Antonio are negligible.
And crimes of passion involving people who know each other, like the murder-suicide last week, are very difficult to stop under any circumstance.