Combating Property Crime in San Antonio

Research Proposal Part II: Counteracting Property Crime in San Antonio
Background
With a diverse population of more than 1.3 million residents, San Antonio’s real median household income average of $55,083 compares favorably with the national median average of $55,775 (San Antonio household income, 2017). Moreover, San Antonio offers residents and visitors alike with a wide array of historical, cultural, recreational and entertainment venues, including the ever-popular Alamo (About San Antonio, 2017). In this large and relatively affluent city, the bad news is that it is not surprising that property crime remains a problem but the good news is that property crime levels are decreasing, albeit modestly, as discussed further below.
Literature Review
In 2011, San Antonio experienced a total of 80,871 property crimes (i.e., burglaries, larceny thefts, and vehicle thefts as shown in Table 1 below. By 2016, though, the city’s property crimes had declined to a total of 77,786 as shown in Table 2 below, and the totals for 2017 year to date (37,568) reflect a further decline as well as shown in Table 3 below (Uniform crime reports, 2017).
Property crime in San Antonio: 2011
Burglary
Larceny Theft
Vehicle Theft
Source: San Antonio Police Department, 2017, Uniform Crime Reports at http://www. sanantonio.gov/SAPD/Uniform-Crime-Reports
These trends are the result, at least in part, of increasing educational levels and employment opportunities in San Antonio which mirror comparable declines in other similarly situated large American cities (Wachter, 2016). Notwithstanding this progress in reducing property crime rates, San Antonio still suffers from a property crime rate of 50.47 per 1,000 residents that is nearly double the State of Texas average of 28.31 per 1,000 residents (Property crime comparison, 2017). This disparity can be attributed, again at least in part, to the high percentage of San Antonio residents (about 20%) who remain mired in poverty despite the city’s enviable unemployment rate of just 4.2% compared to the national average of about 5.6% (Williams, 2016).