Chief Vasquez Talks Crime Trends at February's Chamber Luncheon

Approximately 185 Chamber of Commerce members from San Angelo businesses made reservations for the monthly chamber luncheon this month, which was scheduled to take place on Tuesday. Despite bad weather forcing the Chamber to reschedule last minute, the Rio Concho West Clubhouse was full Wednesday, as members convened for lunch and a presentation by keynote speaker Police Chief Tim Vasquez.

Cornerstone Christian School, KIDY and Republic Services sponsored the event this month, and appeared with staff to give brief introductions of their teams and services. Kenny Ramzinski, General Manager of Republic Services, cited a desire to become increasingly active in the community as the business’ decision to sponsor the luncheon.

“Part of our philosophy is giving back and being deeply embedded in the community, showing up after hours, doing those types of things,” Ramzinski said. “We’ve been a member for several years, [but] we just recently got a little more involved with the luncheons and stuff like that….this is the first time we’ve ever sponsored one,” he said. “Our employees live here, this is a small town and our employees do a lot of things for volunteer work.”

Each month, the chamber seeks sponsors from businesses that are members of the Chamber of Commerce, which helps to cover food, venue and travel costs of the speaker if there is travel involved, Chamber of Commerce President Phil Neighbors says. The event is very popular and always sees a good turnout, sometimes selling out of the lunch tickets.

“Our members, in their annual survey, mark this as one of their highest-rated events,” Neighbors said. “They have to have lunch somewhere, so if they can come and network with other businesspeople and learn something, then it’s a real win-win for them. We may change venues or formats a little bit, but the luncheons have continued now for many years, very successfully.”

At each luncheon, a speaker is invited to present on topics relevant to the community and to local businesses. This month, Chief Vasquez was chosen for a variety of reasons, Neighbors said. “We hadn’t heard him in a few years, and there is a lot of awareness of change and growth in the community and that creates some anxiety in the minds of people. So to have him show us figures and speak to various issues, that, I think, is very beneficial to our business community and the community at large,” he said.

Chief Vasquez began his presentation by looking at population growth and projections for the future, as a base point for the impact increased growth will have on crime within the community.

“One of the things that we’re asked all the time is how is the population affecting us in our performance and our ability to do our job. I can tell you that it has, specifically when you look at population in 2010. We were at 93,200 projected—or what we received from the Census the other day—was 99 (thousand). If we continue on that step at 3.1 percent…by 2014, we’ll be at 105 (thousand),” Vasquez said, noting that the number represents the general population, not those staying in hotels or coming in from surrounding areas.

The chief said from 2003 to 2012, overall crime decreased 47.8 percent. “I want you to really kind of get your hands around that,” he said. “If I cut your paycheck 48 percent, would that be dramatic? We cut crime 47.8 percent from 2003 to 2012. That’s attributed to the men and woman of our organization,” he said as applause rose throughout the room. 

On the subject of crime, Vasquez moved the presentation to focus on drugs in the community, a topic that proved to be of concern for many present, who posed questions of the chief pertaining to the crime after his presentation was over.

“One of the…alarming trends that I want to discuss…is drug arrests in our community,” he said. “We are often asked, ‘what is the crime, what is the drug problem,’” Vasquez said. “The drug problem is meth. Being so close to the border, we have a lot of gangs that are directly related to the drug cartels…we’ve seen an increase in methamphetamine…in 2010 we made 88, in 2011 we made 77, in 2012, we jumped up to 150 and in 2013 we made 232.”

Vasquez mentioned that currently, more analysis needs to be done in order to determine whether or not there are more drugs in the community, adding that the department has changed it’s culture over the past several years to put more emphasis on officer-initiated police work, resulting in more arrests. For several years, the ratio of call responses to self-initiated activity was very high. Recently, that distance has slowed.

“Over the past few years, our self-initiated activity has only been able to increase 4 percent because we have more calls coming in,” Vasquez said. “What’s alarming to me…is that you can see that the increase from 2012 to 2013 is 13.1 percent in calls. Our arrests have gone up, our seizures have gone up, the amount of evidence intake that we have has gone up dramatically…that’s right around 1,000 calls per month that has increased.”

In 2013, overall crime rates went up 4.1 percent as well, the chief said, which can be correlated to increased traffic and population. Vasquez said that as the population continues to increase the division between responding to calls and officer-initiated activity will continue to widen, thus limiting the department’s ability to be proactive.

“In 10 years, we’ve actually decreased our operational budget,” he said, asking if any others present had also done so. The room remained silent. “We’re expected to do more with less. Going back to crime trends, going back to calls for service, those trends, the men and women of our organization are doing a lot more with a lot less, and they deserve credit for that,” he said.

Vasquez continued his presentation by highlighting some of the SAPD’s budget issues and ways in which the department has worked to save money, as well as mentioned the recent Meet and Confer meetings the PD has had with City staff to seek an agreement on a pay raise for officers. 

For more information on the last meet and confer in which the City made a proposal, click here.

Further information on the department’s high-expense budget item, vehicle maintenance, can be found here.

For more on the SAPD’s request for a raise and statistics on retention and recruitment, click here.

For more on the City and SAPD's battle over the budget, click here.