NEW CRIME-FIGHTING PROGRAM EFFECTIVE

On March 19, I rode along with Officer John Seaton of the San Antonio
Police Department's Tactical Response Unit to witness the successes
and dangers the unit experiences on a nightly basis.

Chief William McManus instituted the crime-fighting program in June
as the pilot Crime Response Unit, or CRU.

So great was the CRU's success, that the spiking crime trend San
Antonio saw in the first half of 2006 actually slid backward.

In January, the CRU was renamed the Tactical Response Unit, or TRU,
and was made permanent.

Constituents from certain neighborhoods in District 4 have been
asking for help with the drugs, gangs and fear that are a part of
their lives after dark. I finally saw what they were talking about.

I witnessed the depravity of youths who had been made slaves of the
drug heroin and had lost touch with their own humanity. I saw a
pregnant woman with no regard for her unborn child ingesting crack
cocaine to rid her car of evidence during a routine traffic stop. I
also witnessed the TRU's raid on a notorious "crack house."

On that same night, a convict who escaped the Fabian Dominguez State
Jail and had been living at large among the community for two years
was apprehended.

The old adage "You never know what is going on behind closed doors"
was never more true than on March 19.

By the end of the night, the TRU made 17 arrests. Six resulted in
felony charges, and two felony warrants were cleared.

Three guns were taken off the street, as were crack cocaine and
heroin.

Since January, the TRU has made more than 2,500 arrests and 1,000
narcotics charges, cleared more than 4,500 warrants, confiscated more
than 200 guns and seized 250 pounds of marijuana, 9,600 grams of
cocaine, 1,550 grams of heroin and more than 700 grams of
methamphetamine.

Scarcely was I exposed to danger, unlike the men and women in blue
who put themselves in harm's way on a daily basis in the name of
keeping our streets safe. For their bravery, they will always have my
utter respect and admiration.

The officers love their jobs, yet they clearly love the people of San
Antonio even more. They are committed to making sure that threats to
our community do not jeopardize our quality of life.

In that vein, we must also realize the future of San Antonio that we
have worked so hard for is occurring right now. Therefore, now is the
time to support our new police chief's efforts to combine
crime-fighting and crime prevention into the most innovative
crime-fighting measure San Antonio has seen.

As a city on the cusp of tremendous growth, we are at a crossroads of
opportunity to choose to say no to fear. The worst thing we can do is
to take a soft stance on crime.

I, for one, am fully supportive of Chief McManus' no-nonsense
management of the San Antonio Police Department and his
implementation of the TRU. While I would like to say the TRU is icing
on the proverbial cake, the reality is the TRU is a great program in
its infancy.

I encourage incoming City Council leadership to pledge their support
for the TRU and commit the resources that will put more officers on
our streets. With strong leadership, San Antonio is becoming a safer
place to live, one night at a time.