CRIME IN S.A. TAKES A BREATHER

Breaking a three-year streak of sharply rising crime rates, property
crimes dipped during the first part of the year while violent crimes
reported to police increased only slightly.

Overall, there were 54,524 crimes reported from January to July. Last
year, in that time period, there were 54,737 reported, a drop of 0.4
percent.

Police statistics released Tuesday show that homicide, rape, robbery
and aggravated assault rose by small percentages from January to July
compared to the same seven months last year.

Those increases were offset by drops in property crimes like burglary
and vehicle theft.

"The fact that we've slowed down so dramatically speaks well for the
members of the department," said Chief Albert Ortiz, who has been
appearing at roll calls at the substations this week to praise the
rank and file. "We've managed to stem the tide with a philosophy of
aggressive law enforcement."

Ortiz believes that a strategy of targeting repeat offenders, gangs
and drug dealers accounts for much of the decrease in property crimes.

"We're using everything we have at our disposal to go after targets
that pay high dividends," he said.

As of Aug. 1, police counted a 1.5 percent increase in violent crimes
compared to the same period in 2001. But in 2001, the increase was
24.7 percent over 2000. And the city had seen a 27.1 percent increase
in 2000 compared to 1999.

The relative decline comes despite a sputtering economy and
contradicts the conventional wisdom that crime rises during hard
times. But Michael Gilbert, a criminal justice professor at University
of Texas at San Antonio, said local statistics have historically
broken that rule.

"San Antonio seems to weather financial declines relatively well," he
said. "If you go back to the 1980s when we had a real decline in
income in Texas, San Antonio fared better than, say, Dallas or Houston."

The city's military ties and unique culture help to insulate it from
fluctuating crime risks, he said.

"The Mexican American population has an emerging middle and political
class that is now very powerful and influential. So the hopelessness
and helplessness that you may find in other cities may not be as
endemic here," Gilbert said.

From January to July, police counted 60 slayings - a 7.1 percent
increase over the same period last year, accounting for the largest
rise in all categories of serious crimes tracked by the FBI.

During the first seven months of 2001, police reported a 43.6 percent
increase in homicides compared to that time period in 2000. It's a
category that is closely watched by criminal justice experts because
it is deemed to be one of the most reliable measures of a city's crime
rate.

"We hit rock bottom a couple of years ago, so we anticipated that
homicides would increase," Ortiz said, referring to the city's
homicide rate in 1998, when police recorded 89 killings, the lowest in
nearly three decades. "There's no way a city our size is going to
maintain 100 homicides or less."