City sees crime fluctuation during 2020

San Marcos experienced a year of high aggravated assaults despite low homicide counts in 2020.

San Marcos Chief of Police Stan Standridge says homicide is not the true indicator of violence in a community, rather he says aggravated assault — when a deadly weapon was used or an incident resulted in serious bodily injury — should be looked at to gauge violence.

There were 129 incidents of aggravated assault in San Marcos in 2020 and in 2019 down from 138 in 2020.

“You see it has somewhat fluctuated,” Standridge said. “It hits a high crescendo of 138 and then stabilizes at about 130. There are some atypical years but 129 is high. What this means is out of 365, 129 days a citizen tried to kill another citizen but they don’t because of medical intervention, or they miss when they shoot.”

Aggravated assault was at 119 in 2000, then well below 100 until 2005. From 2005 until 2015, it hovered around 110 with a few peak years in the 130s in 2009 and 2013.

Standridge says 2019 was a terrible year for homicides but 2020 was a much calmer year.

There were eight homicides in 2019 and just two in 2020. Since 2000, San Marcos has had fewer than three homicides per year with the exception of five in 2015 and 2017 and the eight in 2019.

“We have very little influence over this,” Standridge said, adding that domestic disputes and drugs are the two factors driving homicides. “We can fight the drugs but you and I both know we will never win the war on drugs.

“The way to reduce aggravated assault is to go after the gun violence and go after the repeat offenders. There is a lot of conversation in San Marcos about Cite and Release for misdemeanor offenses and nonviolent offenses. There isn't nearly enough conversation about what we are doing about violent crime and how can the community partner with the police department to reduce violent crime.”

Standridge has been actively working in his first two months on the job to expand the focus of the Chief’s Advisory Panel beyond Cite and Release.

Rape numbers rapidly increased from 12 in 2010 to 58 in 2016 and 89 in 2020. Standridge said San Marcos likely has higher rape numbers than other municipalities because of the student population.

“The Me Too movement was really good because it gave victims the courage to say ‘me too,’” Standridge said. “Notice what happened to the numbers when this national narrative was occurring.”

He also noted the increase in reporting doesn’t necessarily indicate incidents weren’t happening in the years past.

San Marcos had 240 burglaries in 2020 up from 228 in 2019 but down from 2017 and 2018 with numbers close to 280.

There were significantly lower incidents of theft in 2020 with 913 down from 1,185 in 2019 and numbers well above 1,000 dating back to 2007. In fact, 2020 had the lowest number of thefts for the past two decades.

Vehicle thefts, however, were up at 133 in last year from 127 in 2019.