Violent Crime Increases in San Marcos

myFOXausitn.com (San Marcos, TX)-- Out-of-town criminals are to blame for a spike in the violent crime rate last year in San Marcos, the police chief said Tuesday.

Chief Howard Williams said there was a 9% increase in aggravated assaults and robberies. During an annual report to the community at city hall, Williams recapped several fatal shootings and robberies.

"Well, we've had our ups and downs this last year,” Williams said. “I think everybody is familiar with some of the shootings that we've had this summer.”

In August, a man was gunned down in his University Heights apartment. Two men were arrested in connection to the fatal shooting.

Weeks later, three teenagers were shot and one of them died after they invaded a home on Chestnut Street looking for marijuana and a dealer by the name of Harry Potter. A fourth teenager, who was uninjured, was arrested and faces a charge of capital murder. The four teenagers were from Luling.

"We can't build a wall around the town. This kind of crime is going to occur," said Williams who also noted he was going to ask city council for an additional six police officers in next year’s budget to meet the growing population.

Williams said he is not particularly happy with the percentage of cases that are assigned to detectives and end up getting closed because of a lack of victim cooperation. Out of 732 cases assigned to detectives, only a third of them were cleared by arrests or warrants.

During Tuesday’s televised address, San Marcos Police unveiled another tool to help citizens know about the crimes in their areas. The tool is a website called myneighborhoodupdate.net .

It accesses the police department’s CAD system and shows the crimes on a Google map. The system refreshes every 15 minutes. Williams said he hopes the site will encourage neighborhoods that have high crime rates to form watch groups.

Among the crime stats that were down in 2009, sex assaults and auto thefts. Shoplifting crimes were up.