On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho.

San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beemer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beemer.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for on the Record, I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we are talking with San Antonio's brand new or almost new police chief, Jesse Salomé.

Thank you very much for coming in.

And congratulations.

Thank you.

Randy.

Good morning.

I'm happy to be here.

Well, it's been, as I said, a month since you were officially confirmed, but you were interim chief for a couple of months, and you've been in the department with 20, 27 years, 27 years.

I know people are asking you right off.

You've been in the department and you've looked you've worked closely with chief McManus.

Priorities.

What do you tell people about your administration versus William McManus?

Yeah.

My priorities have been pretty simple.

There are simple priorities, but they're not easy to do.

But the first one is safety.

Public safety.

And just making sure that we are doing everything we can to keep violent crime down.

We've been trending down for the last couple of years.

We are really trending down this year, and that's something that I want to keep the foot on the gas with people, our people, the police department, the members of this department.

I'm really focused in on their wellness, not just their wellness, but their morale.

And I want to keep that up healthy, happy workers equal better public safety performers, and they're going to be better in the community.

And last thing is community trust without anything.

If we don't have community trust, we've got nothing.

You think it's you have a different perspective because William McManus came in from outside as a chief.

He'd been an assistant chief elsewhere.

He wasn't one of the guys, one of the women, one of the people on the force.

Do you have that different perspective?

What will it mean?

Yeah, I mean, I think the truth is it is different when you come up in a department, your home department.

And I know him and I talked about that when he was in D.C.

he knew what that was like to go through their academy.

I know what the San Antonio Police Academy was like.

I know how it was when I first started, and I've seen the changes.

And so I think my priorities are a little bit different.

But, I mean, I've taken a lot of what I've learned from him and implemented that and do my leadership strategy.

But certainly anybody will tell you that when you are coming in from the outside, even as long as the chief was here and he was here for almost 20 years, I mean, he that that is unprecedented.

But just coming in from the outside, it's a really tall order.

And I think he did a fantastic job to be here, that what are the small things you're going to start with?

Just a small things is really just getting back to basics, making role calls again, making sure that the officers see me.

I want to be present, I want to be approachable and I want to be accountable.

And it's not that the chief big man was any of those things, but it's just it is a you really have to be deliberate about doing that because there's long days, early mornings, and sometimes the last thing you want to do is put your uniform back on and go to that 10:00 dog watch roll call.

But those folks need to see you because they are often the last people to hear about what's going on in the department.

And the at the same time they confirmed you, or about the same time they also confirmed city council, the new police union contract.

What's different in that and how will that affect you?

It's a shorter deal.

It's a three year deal.

I think they were the union was rightly focused right now on on pay and benefits like they always are.

And so I think the difference in this contract is that it's something that as a new police chief, I don't have to worry about ongoing negotiations and some of the side effects that come with that.

You know, officers are generally voted on that 60% approval, so they're generally happy with with that contract.

And that's a really good way for me to hit the ground running.

I know some of the questions you've been asked are about discipline and how you'll be different from chief McManus.

Some had criticized him for focusing on punitive suspensions, longer suspensions.

As a former officer here, I'm sure you're getting from officers.

Hey, are you going to be a little more lenient on this kind of thing?

Yeah, and I think that's the question that I have gotten absolutely from officers.

And I think I'm just going to be a little bit more I'm going to use a lot of discretion when I hand out disciplines or absolutely cases that I have zero tolerance for, if it's misconduct or laziness or officers that aren't showing their proper compassion when they're responding to a call.

I have a little sympathy for that when officers are doing that, but often is the case.

Officers make mistakes and I want to treat mistakes like mistakes and misconduct like misconduct.

And those are.

Different mental health calls that officers are in, 911 calls that when you go out and you realize it's a mental health issue.

How are you going to maybe change or keep what's in place there?

Yeah, I'm going to keep what's in place right now.

We've got a mental health unit that responds to calls.

We've also got the SAR core unit, which is a multidisciplinary unit that responds to call.

So they're taking about 34% of the 40 plus 1000 calls for mental health that we get a year.

I think we're doing our part.

I think we're doing the most that we can, and I want to continue to do that.

But I also want to advocate for other entities, for other agencies and for other systems to step up as well.

This week was announced with you and the feds, a new task force on drug overdoses.

That's been called an epidemic.

And a lot of people haven't heard about that here before.

As an epidemic, the fentanyl, how much is the police department going to commit to that?

How bad is it right now?

Yeah, I mean, that has been a problem for many years.

And it's not it's not an epidemic for people that don't have that issue.

But there's a lot of families that are dealing with people that are struggling with substance abuse.

And for us, this is going after the root cause.

And so we've got five officers dedicated to this task force, and we're going to treat that the way we do any investigation, a homicide investigation and our investigation to get to those people that are putting this crap on the streets.

How about violent crime?

You mentioned that right off the top.

More officers at different way that they're going to be targeting that.

How does it work?

Yeah, we're we're going to use our intelligence led strategies.

We're going to use data driven approaches like the UTSA crime plan, to really hone in on those areas that are overly overrepresented in violent crime.

And we're going to do that in a way that is going to be kind of a surgical approach.

So we're not just putting a whole net across the whole side of town and making everybody feel like they're under siege.

We're going to target those offenders, that small group of people that are responsible for the majority of the violent crime.

A visible problem that may be more visible than it is is homelessness.

And to deal with that population, I understand there's a pilot program going to be starting about sending officers out, but they'll give them more time to move to a different place.

They'll have outreach for six weeks, and then you'll come and start arresting people and moving them out and maybe blocking off access to where they've been.

Yeah, that's that's pretty spot on.

That's pretty close.

So HSF Homeless Strategies and Services is leading that effort.

They are primarily responsible for kind of identifying those areas and going in there and giving those folks all the resources that they need to move on.

Our role is to go in there and make sure that once we move these folks out, that we don't just allow it to repopulate again and then repeat that cycle over and over.

So whether that is blocking off that area where that's stepping up extra patrols in that area or taking enforcement action when necessary, when somebody is breaking the law, we're prepared to.

Do that.

There's a new diversion program that's pre arrest diversion again a pilot program.

How is that going to work.

I think that's that's something I'm really excited about is something I've been working on as part of the ad hoc committee that was formed by the by Councilwoman Castillo and Commissioner Rodriguez.

And I think that that's were limited on those offenses.

So some of those big offenses that we're seeing, particularly around this area and in downtown, is the criminal trespass.

So we can get away to divert those folks that are going to go to jail for a criminal trespass, try to get them some mental health resources, substance abuse treatment, keep them out of jail.

That's going to be the goal with that.

And we're starting with with one particular with that one and low level theft where people we're not stealing from somebody directly, maybe stealing from a company and you're not passing on private property.

Lightning rod, in terms of issues right now as immigration, I know the mayor ask you about this, how the police chief is going to be working with federal agents or not, and cooperation.

What do you tell people about that?

I tell people very simply that we follow the law.

So there's a state law, SB four, that requires a certain level of cooperation.

And we are being very transparent about what that looks like.

Every month we published a report, and when Ice calls us for assistance, it's typically going to be for support, for uniform presence, for crime scene support, for traffic control.

And that is what we're doing.

But I will tell everybody else SaPD does not enforce immigration laws.

We are not immigration officers.

We are required to provide a certain level of support, which we do.

How has crime changed in San Antonio since you got on the department in the early 2000?

You know, crime is cyclical.

It goes up, it goes down.

And we, you know, we always want to take credit for when we're doing something unique and exploratory, when it goes down and it'll go up for no reason.

So it is you know, San Antonio has grown exponentially just in the 27 years that I've been on the department, and we continue to be one of the fastest growing cities in the country.

And so with the with that growth comes those big city problems.

And so it's just a matter of staying ahead of that.

But we're seeing a lot more organized criminal activity than than we've seen in the past.

Big city problems have changed the department and changed what you're focusing on.

As someone who's grown up in the department, how much are you now going to be looking at other big city departments to see what they're doing, what trends are in terms of policing?

Yeah, that's something that I do all the time.

It's something that I did as an assistant chief.

We're looking to see because there's a tendency to to localize things that are going on in the national level.

And if we're seeing something in Austin or Dallas, it's just a matter of time before we see it in San Antonio.

And so just being able to keep one step ahead of those trends is really helpful for us.

What do you want to tell the community about how they can help you?

What have you always wanted in terms of help from the community aside from just tips?

Yeah, I mean, I think really the root of what we do is based on community engagement and the level of trust and accountability that they place in us, and our ability and our willingness to go out there and earn that every day working together.

There's not a problem that we can't solve.

Retaining officers has been a big problem.

A lot of people have told me that since the 80s and 90s.

There's a different mindset of new officers coming in might be their first job.

It might be three four years instead of a life.

Yeah.

Different workforce.

And we've seen that, you know, a lot of these younger kids that are joining the department now, they have an eye on technology.

They grew up totally different.

Policing is a people business and that will never change.

And so we've done some things.

This new contract that you talked about earlier, the CBA, there's some unique shift scheduling.

So there's a hybrid shift schedule.

A lot of people don't want to stick around because they don't like the shift work.

It's something that I dealt with as I came up.

And so we're looking for ways that helps with not just officer wellness with work life balance, but it helps with retention and recruiting.

Well, good luck with that.

Jesse Salomé, thank you very much for coming in.

New new stars on the lapel as well.

Thanks for coming in and congratulations.

Thank you so much.

Pleasure.

Thank you.

The city is looking.

At legal action.

Trying to fight the controversial Ice detention center, planned to go in next year on the east side.

Here to talk about that is city Councilwoman Phyllis Villa Grande district three.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

The Ice detention center.

They already bought the warehouse.

They're planning to open it.

They've got security lined up.

What would you like to happen?

I'd like it to stop.

I'd like this to stop nationally.

I think this is bad for the United States.

I think this is.

This goes against what we have within the Constitution.

So I don't want this.

I definitely do not want this here in San Antonio.

But what can we do now that they've made the city of San Antonio a target?

Basically.

What do you think you can do?

We can look at what legally, other cities and states have done regarding this and gotten some of these facilities shut down.

I think our position is we want to prevent it from coming into San Antonio.

We want to prevent the construction changes that they're planning for the warehouse.

And so we need to kind of take a look at it.

We signed a CCR which takes five signatures from the council members to start with.

The basic questions was like, how is this going to impact our utilities?

Do we have the capability Saws and CPS?

We will we'll move forward on that, have that conversation.

But I think what I've seen is possible litigation, and this is what I've heard from the community members.

I think it's what we saw as evidenced by the march that happened on Saturday.

So we need to have a larger conversation about this and then possibly look at do we do a resolution?

How do we direct our city attorney to move forward on this and where we can be part of this beyond what what is traditionally done with just the utilities and the environment?

That's step one.

But there are multiple steps to this.

Litigation costs money.

I've heard some in the community say they don't want the city to spend any money on litigation.

What do you expect it will cost and what would you like to do with that litigation.

So any litigation, if you talk to attorneys that at this scale against the federal government, we're looking at half $1 million.

That's it.

That's somewhat expect maybe more than that.

Well, that's where you start at half $1 million.

But here here we are in San Antonio, and we have Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert, you know, shouting from the rooftops that he's ready.

He's ready to go into litigation.

We have others, hopefully in the area that are ready to go into litigation also regarding this issue.

So I think that's what's going to be the next step is look, not only what we can do as a city, but how we can partner together to to prevent this from happening in San Antonio.

I heard a few months ago we had someone in talking about their opposition to this and that part of the strategy was to slow roll this.

And after the November elections, there might be a different majority in the House, maybe the Senate.

So that would affect plans.

Is that part of your strategy?

Well, you know, I think part of it is we have we would love that.

Congressman Castro has been there.

He's been one of the biggest voices for us here in Texas for the facility in Dili.

He's got help at the federal level this November.

And that's not just the state of Texas.

That's across the nation where he needs help with this issue.

And so, yes, we're all looking at at the midterms and saying, what's going to happen there?

Do we get the change?

But I think we can't simply just wait to to take action.

Then we need to start taking action.

Now of majority of us, the of the council women signed a memo to say, hey, we want to discuss this.

We understand it's possible litigation.

We understand it's going to cost money, but we need to have the conversation.

You expect it to pass next week.

I expect to see some some, some sort of wording of a resolution for next Thursday on the 15th.

And what are the legal arguments?

What do you expect that lawyers will argue that they can at least slow down?

If not, stop this because some people will say it's the federal government's job.

They've already bought the land.

Well, you know, the one thing, Congressman Castro is here on Friday and he had a kind of a mock congressional hearing.

I was able to be a part of it.

Where's the transparency?

Where's the accountability?

They're basically operating as jails.

Jails don't put kids.

You don't put kids in jails, but they do have children at these facilities.

The other thing is the the contractor that they've contracted with are the same contractors that did alligator Alcatraz.

What sort of reputation is that?

There are cases there.

And we know that the that this area in particular is litigious is there are cases there.

But when, when is it time for the city to get involved and what is it time for the city to just help with information and date and data?

What about the effect in San Antonio?

I've heard people say that because they're building this 1500 bed detention center or thereabouts, that it will affect San Antonio because they're not going to want a detention center that's not full.

Yeah.

Do you expect there would be more raids in this area?

I expect them to be at our churches on in district three, the south and the southeast side of San Antonio.

I expect them to be at our schools.

I expect them to be aware we where our community goes to shop in and around our community.

So that's what I expect, because they only make money if that facility is full.

And why are they going to go across the nation when they can just basically harass residents here in San Antonio?

Because we have a Mexican, we're of Mexican American descent or Puerto Rican descent, this.

This is why it's a larger conversation.

It does look at at racial profiling.

They are looking we don't know how they're trained.

We don't know what they're told to look for.

But we know there we know from the pattern.

And this is all a pattern of behavior for this, this organization.

And who they hire is that they go to schools, they go to churches, they go to the facilities, the Walmarts that they believe where they can pick up someone and and they pull people over.

But that's all the purview of the federal government in terms of tactics and things like that.

That might seem to be shielded from any kind of lawsuit.

Well, it's it's this federal it's this administration.

I don't think it's the federal government's.

The federal government's job is which we have told them is to fix the immigration issues and make immigration streamline that so that people can find a pathway to live and work here.

And we've got the businesses, communities starting to see the negative impact of this, this in their in their ecosystem and their economic ecosystem.

Environmental issues.

Is that one going to be one of the things you want investigations of that as well as there's another argument.

I've heard that the federal government paid $30 million too much for this.

This property.

Is that anything you can challenge legally?

You know, that is that is where I think nationally.

We need to ask the federal government what they're doing with the dollars.

That is $30 million.

That is $30 million of our taxpayer money.

That should have come back to San Antonio for our streets, roads and infrastructure.

So instead of sending the money back that we pay in in taxes, they are using that to to have this facility.

And if they have the audacity at the federal level to say, well, we did put $30 million into the city of San Antonio through this facility, that we did not ask for, that we do not need.

It's it's insincere.

So I think one of the things we need to do is what is right for Texas, and Texas needs to continue to grow.

And Texas understands that we have a population of immigrants that are part of our workforce, and we would like a pathway for them to work here and to live here permanently if they choose.

So it's just it's a larger conversation.

And this administration has not been well in addressing it.

And I think we at the local level are trying to figure out what our role is and how we work together.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

Phyllis, via Grand District three.

Councilwoman.

Appreciate your time.

Thanks.

Thank you.

On reporter's roundtable this week, the cancellation of for next year's Fiesta has stirred up a lot of controversy.

Here to talk about that.

The kind of backlash to that announcement is Madison Esler, a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Tell us about what has happened since this announcement by the leadership of the Conservation Society.

A lot of members aren't happy about that.

Say they didn't know the extent of the problems.

Yes.

There's been a lot of backlash from long time volunteers who really loved helping run Nios, mainly run by huge crowds of volunteers.

Over 6000.

I think most recently.

And so a lot of families have been running their booths for generations.

Their kids have volunteered and then later moved up to running booths.

So a lot of people are really upset by the decision to cancel it and have seen it as kind of a sudden decision, rather than looking at options for saving it.

Now, a reasonably we had Betty Boucher in the president and CEO, I believe, who made the announcement.

And a lot of people go, well, wait, this is their big fundraiser.

How can they lose money with so many volunteers?

And why would you still run it if it's not making money?

Betty has said that the expenses have gotten steadily higher, so a big one is security.

They have to provide security during the four day event, and it's not just during the actual hours that people are walking around.

It's beforehand.

It's afterward.

It's when they're breaking down the booths and the like.

So security alone is 300,000 to $400,000.

So that's a big bill.

And that's one bill.

Then there's the rent that they pay to the city to actually use lava.

ETA that's about $200,000.

Then there are the food costs, the alcohol costs, the cost of repairing booths that get broken, just kind of a laundry list of things that have gotten more expensive.

And that's an issue at other Fiesta events, two that are also now reimagining themselves as kind of a different kind of entertainment for people.

Yes, a lot of people don't want to spend an arm and a leg to go to an event on a ticket or food.

That's exactly, exactly.

But at the same time, these events are expensive to put on for organizations.

So a lot of people are looking at different ways to try to cut down on the costs.

Sponsorships are not really something that the Conservation Society had looked at in the past, and that's in part because of the main work that they do, which is preserving historic buildings.

And so they're often kind of intention with developers, with businesses.

And so they really hadn't looked at that before.

They're also proud of being independent with this event.

They cover the costs themselves, do it on their own.

But volunteers are increasingly suggesting that they look at sponsorships and look at other avenues to make money, like doing more marketing, for example, about how niacin works, why people should come.

There hasn't been a ton of marketing in the past either.

What about what else they want?

The people who aren't happy.

I guess transparency.

They want numbers.

They want exact numbers and an audit.

Yes.

I think one of the big pieces has been.

Betty has said that the event lost 1.4 million over the past four years, and that the conservation society just couldn't keep running an event that was losing money.

Volunteers have asked to see the reports basically underlying that number, a financial audit the society had done, where those numbers are coming from, how they break down.

And that has not been released publicly.

And so that's added to the frustration about how this came about and the the quickness with which it happened.

What about being downtown?

Especially in the last few years, Alamo Street has been under construction three, four years.

And also you have La Vida that they've been working on that plaza and the the little round building there.

I can't think of Assembly Hall that they weren't able to use.

How much did that you think cut down on attendance?

Well, there's some disagreement there.

They did use the area around the Assembly building, and so it wasn't a huge loss.

And the owners of that building have said they want to be able to come back and use it in the future.

Right now it's being renovated.

So it's it's off limits for now, in essence, and probably will be next year.

But down the road they want them to use it again.

Maverick Plaza is supposed to change because of plans for restaurants there, but right now it's still available.

So the conservations, this idea said we're losing space.

The city and others have said it doesn't really look like the footprint has shrunk that much.

And so that's yet another source of tension that volunteers have been upset about as well.

What is the actual fact.

Parking and traffic and the fact that hemisphere now has an event across the way again?

It used to have decades ago lost a leg right there.

And again, it's in there.

What is that?

One of the things that they've talked about, competition from other events.

Yes, they're definitely seeing competition from other events.

And being downtown means people need to find parking, which is expensive.

That's just another cost that adds on to what it takes for people to come down to the event.

How about parades?

People think of fiesta.

They think of parades.

They think of the River parade.

We used to have one more parade I can think of.

It was decades ago.

Has anyone talked about that?

And those changing?

Yes.

That's part of what we looked at in one of our stories and the parades.

Their expenses are also high.

Weather is also a huge factor with the parades.

If it rains, people aren't going to come and you can't really do anything about that if it's thundering and lightning.

And so moving events to different times of the year has been a discussion.

But you can't predict rain.

So that's difficult.

And security costs again since that's so big as anyone suggested, private security or cheaper security arrangements and why they're so high now compared to what they were.

Yes.

I haven't heard anyone talk about private security, but one reason they are so high is because under the police bargaining agreement, there's a special Fiesta pay category, in essence, where the police officers that are working security are getting paid more to provide security for these events.

So there's not a lot you can do.

You can't negotiate if you're the conservation society.

And that's baked into the CBA.

Is the conservation society.

Some of the membership, are they to the point where they would say rebel but maybe have a split faction?

Is that is it that bad and organization that's been around 100 years?

Yes.

I think it's really exposed a division between the people who are die hards and then conservation society folks who are maybe more focused on the mission of preserving historic buildings.

The volunteers have been pushing and circulating a petition to try to force a special meeting to talk about and talk about their complaints.

And so I'm expecting that that will come about and that perhaps there will be more transparency provided at that event.

Have they talked about how much it's cutting into what else the Conservation society does in their work?

Yes.

One former president called it the golden goose to me for the conservation society.

That was how they started.

It's a major.

Yes.

Yes, it's a major fundraiser.

And so I think that it going away raises questions about, well, where is the money going to come from to continue their work?

If not, and will they try other events.

And I know that they're looking at that.

They're also looking at raising dues potentially, and other avenues to make money that are not.

Thanks very much.

Madison Esler, Neosho fan.

Nyssa fan.

And reporter, San Antonio Express-News.

You can read her and the San Antonio Express-News, which is a newspaper as well as online.

Thanks for coming in.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can watch this show, you can watch any previous shows and download them as podcasts as well.

Just go to KLRN.org I’m Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho.