When Callie Davis-Carr bought her home in Highland Park 31 years ago, the neighborhood on San Antonio’s Southeast Side was quiet.
“There was no fear that something would happen at night,” Davis-Carr told the San Antonio Report last week at the end of a Highland Park Neighborhood Association meeting. “When I first moved here, nobody had a camera [and] nobody had extra lighting.”
She recently installed floodlights in her backyard after noticing strangers walking — sometimes lingering — in alleyways.
“A lot of us have cameras now,” she said as the tables and chairs inside the Bode Community Center were stacked away.
There’s still a thriving, friendly and law-abiding community in Highland Park, Davis-Carr said, but now “it’s more fearful.”
This year, two bullets were found on neighbor Rachel Rohrer’s roof above her bedroom, the suspected result of someone firing a gun into the air.
“I’m thankful that my kids are grown and gone,” said Rohrer, a retired police officer who has lived in the neighborhood for 36 years.
Rohrer, Davis-Carr and several other neighbors told the San Antonio Report that the gunshots they hear at night typically come from within a few blocks of their homes, around a 252-unit mixed-income apartment complex called the Rosemont at Highland Park.
This year, the City of San Antonio — working with UTSA — identified the Rosemont as a “hot spot” for violent crime and has started taking steps to prevent it. The apartment complex is the first of likely several hot spots across the city that will receive additional, tailored attention that goes beyond traditional law enforcement to incorporate environmental and design tactics to promote safety.
During the intervention, the city will install more lighting and security cameras around and within the complex, improve area streets and sidewalks and increase access to services such as youth and workforce programs in an effort to address the underlying conditions that contribute to crime.
Standing in the parking lot in front of one of the complex’s 11 three-story buildings surrounded by fencing, two residents agreed that the Rosemont is in dire straits.
During the day, the complex is usually quiet. On Thursday afternoon, residents took out trash and hauled groceries in from their cars.
But “it’s a different place” at night, said Ruben Torres, who has lived at the Rosemont for almost one year. He pointed to bullet holes on an exterior wall of the apartment above his ground-floor apartment.
The people who lived on the third floor — whom Torres thought were gang-affiliated — were eventually and “thankfully” evicted, he said, but he still tries to avoid going out at night and doesn’t let his grandchildren visit after dark. “I hate to look out the window, because what if I get shot?”
San Antonio hot spots
The first phase of the Violent Crime Reduction Plan that UTSA developed for the city involved “hot spot” policing. Starting in early 2023, officers sat in parked police vehicles within various high-crime areas, including the Rosemont, with their emergency lights on for 15- to 20-minute intervals.
During the first three months of 2024, officers performed this “high-visibility” routine at Rosemont 124 times.
Those hot spots saw a nearly 37% decrease in average violent crime incidents this year compared to last, according to data released in April, and the approach may have contributed to an overall flattening of violent crime in 2023 after four years of an upward trend.
But violent crime at Rosemont and several other hot spot apartment complexes proved particularly pervasive.
UTSA’s analysis found that Rosemont was the only location that ranked in the top 10 for violent crime, calls for service regarding violence and arrests for violent crimes over two years, from September 2021 through August 2023.
Hot spot policing will continue citywide as the second phase, known as “problem-oriented, place-based policing,” takes a more holistic approach to address the deeper issues at Rosemont. More apartment complexes and other hot spots will likely be treated next year.
The third phase, called “focused deterrence,” is still under development but will focus on individuals routinely involved in violent crime.
One contributing factor to Rosemont’s selection for phase two treatment was its ownership. It’s owned and operated by Opportunity Home San Antonio, the local housing authority.
“This is the first time that anyone’s done this [in San Antonio],” said Michael Smith, a UTSA criminology and criminal justice professor, director of the university’s Center for Applied Community and Policy Research and former police officer. “It’s a new process and I think there was a realization that the city wanted a potential good partner to start with.”
The four other apartment complexes that UTSA and the city considered for phase two treatment are privately owned.
“Part of the goal here was to get everyone’s feet wet and learn how to do this process before we take on the absolute most difficult [hot spot],” Smith said.
Opportunity Home is completely on board with the initiative, said Domingo Ibarra, the agency’s director of security.
“It’s music to my ears,” Ibarra said, adding that the partnership with the city could give Opportunity Home the framework it needs to improve security throughout its housing system.
Affordable housing
The Rosemont was built in 2007.
In May 2020, it transitioned to the housing authority’s mixed-income housing program called Beacon Communities, a nonprofit that offers subsidized, market rate and mixed-income affordable housing for low- and moderate-income individuals and families.
About 75%, or 188, of the 252 units are leased. To qualify for an apartment, the household’s annual income must be at or below 60% of the area median income. That’s $37,200 for an individual and $47,820 for a family of three.
According to police reports that Ibarra reviewed, a “high percentage” of criminal incidents at the Rosemont are instigated by “unauthorized people” visiting residents or otherwise trespassing on the property, he said.
Holes are regularly cut into several parts of the fence surrounding the apartments and adjacent to several acres of vacant, overgrown land, Ibarra said. The security gate at the main vehicle entrance and exit point off Rigsby Avenue stays open long enough for at least two vehicles to pass through.
Beacon has closed off additional vehicle exits in an attempt to stem unauthorized visits. Still, reports of stolen vehicles being stored in the complex’s parking lots persist, he said.
With nearly a half billion dollars in deferred maintenance across Opportunity Home’s more than 18,000-unit inventory, “we don’t have the capacity” to keep up, Ibarra said. The agency’s security budget has increased in recent years but still faces other budgetary shortfalls.
Torres said crime conditions — and the complex’s physical condition — have gotten slightly better since he first moved in nearly a year ago, but a neighbor, who declined to provide his name, said crime has worsened.
“The people who live here, they’re [dealing] drugs … and inviting people in here,” the neighbor said.
Torres, his neighbor and Highland Park residents said improved lighting in and around the Rosemont would help.
“We really need more lighting,” Davis-Carr said. “Light dispels darkness and light brings exposure.”
Interventions underway
The phase two treatment plan for Rosemont does indeed include more lighting.
The city recently installed three solar-powered LED streetlights on Hammon and East Drexel avenues. These were already part of the city’s plan to address streetlight gaps across San Antonio but were expedited due to proximity to the Rosemont hot spot.
The city is slated to spend $405,000 on mobile cameras that can read license plates and $15,000 on an animal vaccine clinic for residents and the neighborhood, pending council approval in August.
That money comes from a $3.5 million city fund reserved for phase two interventions at Rosemont and other future phase two hotspots.
To begin to address the area’s stray and roaming dog problem, the city has deployed a specialized Animal Care Services case management team to help area residents avoid citations and prevent animals from being sent to shelters.
Other interventions, such as street and sidewalk improvements, will be covered by various departments’ existing project budgets and bond programs, city officials have said.
Biweekly homeless encampment outreach and cleanups in the area will continue as needed, sidewalk improvements are estimated to be complete in late fall 2024, street improvements will begin in 2025 and vegetation clearing is estimated to begin in October 2024, according to the city’s Integrated Community Safety Office.
That office, which coordinates the implementation of the Violent Crime Reduction Plan with various city departments and UTSA, aims to send out a survey to Rosemont residents this week — once approved by Opportunity Home — to find out what services or features they think will help.
The city’s Human Services Department has scheduled a resource event at the Rosemont on July 27 — and additional programming to connect residents to educational and vocational opportunities will be added there and at the nearby Bode Community Center over the next several months.
The city and Opportunity Home will also be looking into the feasibility of installing doorbell cameras on units in the complex and repairing or enhancing fencing and lighting. The San Antonio Police Department also will monitor crime at the Highview Apartments adjacent to the Rosemont and the nearby food mart.
For Ibarra, the biggest benefit of phase two for the housing authority will be the increased collaboration and data sharing with the city, Code Enforcement Services and SAPD.
“Institutionalized partnerships, when we understand what data they have, and they understand what data we need” means the agency can start addressing any number of issues, he said.
“I want to use [Rosemont] as a flagship,” he added. The “administrative innovation” provided by the partnership will allow the agency to replicate it. “We can — we will — do this level of work at all the other properties.”
If the results are like those from the City of Dallas, where a similar UTSA plan was implemented, the neighborhood should see results in weeks or months, said Smith, the UTSA criminology professor.
Skepticism tempered by hope
While the lighting and cameras are certainly welcome, some residents are skeptical that these interventions will have a lasting impact.
“Maybe I’m being a pessimist, but the lights … those will stay on for a while,” said Rohrer, the retired police officer. “But as many shots that come from that area, I’m sure that they’ll be target practice. The cameras — let’s see how long those last.”
Increasing patrol makes more sense to her if the goal is to deter crime. Still, she’s “hopeful” these interventions will help. “We’ll stay vocal and we’ll keep up on it.”
Ibarra, a former police chief, is confident that this kind of partnership with both law enforcement and crime prevention through environmental design, or CPTED, will prove effective.
CPTED is different from the 1980s “broken windows theory” debunked in 2019 that had been used to justify over-policing.
“In practice, CPTED principles can be used to make spaces more clearly visible and more inviting to a wide range of users, activating spaces and encouraging legitimate uses,” according to Local Initiatives Support Corp., a national nonprofit community development financial institution. “It can also be used to define privately controlled areas, reclaim vacant or deteriorated spaces for community use, and ensure that the community appears clean, orderly and well-maintained. These activities convey a sense of pride and ownership, discourage trespass, and make spaces less conducive to illicit activity.”
The physical characteristics of a place influence how it’s perceived, Ibarra said. He hopes physical improvements will encourage more residents to call and report bad actors.
“If you have graffiti coming in here, if you have trash jumping out of the dumpsters, if you have broken sidewalks, light fixtures that are not only not operational but they’re dangling, you have a tendency to believe that nobody cares,” Ibarra said. “So you feel welcome here as that type of offender. … People feel safe when they see things in proper order.”
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