San Marcos Police present 2024 public-safety report; department outlines reforms, accreditation progress and new equipment

At a March 4 San Marcos City Council work session, Chief Stan Standridge and multiple department leaders presented a comprehensive 2024 public-safety briefing that combined crime data, internal-accountability reforms, new equipment and staffing updates, and the department27s plan to expand mental-health response capacity.

The presentation reported that overall reported violent crime has declined since a 2022 peak: Patty Homme, the department27s crime analyst supervisor, said violent offenses fell from 456 in 2022 to 325 in 2023 and to 261 in 2024. "So we are moving in the right direction as it relates to violent crime," she said. The department also reported 54,511 "community member contacts" (calls for service or related contacts), 69 reportable uses of force in 2024, 21 vehicle pursuits and 51 fleet accidents in 2024 (27 of which were deemed preventable). Commander Tiffany Williams and others said the department will continue to refine policies around pursuits and use-of-force reporting.

Internal accountability and training

Commander Tiffany Williams reviewed internal changes the department has adopted in recent years, including an Office of Professional Conduct that expanded investigative capacity and an Event Review Board that reviews every use of force, pursuit and preventable crash. Williams said the department recorded 42 internal investigations from 2021 to 2024 and that 26 of those inquiries were substantiated and produced corrective or disciplinary action ranging from counseling to termination. She described a new active-bystandership program for officers that is designed to normalize intervention by peers to prevent mistakes and misconduct.

Accreditation

Assistant Chief Bob Klett said San Marcos is pursuing accreditation through the Texas Police Chiefs Association and that the on-site assessment team will visit April 222424. Klett described accreditation as a multi-step process that requires compliance with 173 best-practice standards and said the department had submitted its final documentation the week of the briefing.

New equipment and procurement

The department described several new equipment rollouts in 2024: a phased deployment of the Taser 10 starting in May (increasing probe count and range compared with the prior model); BolaWrap devices; and 40-millimeter less-lethal launchers intended to replace some beanbag-shotgun deployments. Assistant chiefs and commanders said Taser 10 training and rollout continued through the year and that the 40-millimeter launchers are available at approximately two units per patrol shift. Chief Standridge and staff also explained that an "officer safety plan" bundled purchase from Axon includes Tasers, two body cameras per officer on a rotating schedule, cloud video storage, training modules and software licenses. They said the bundled officer-safety plan cost $343,123 for 123 officers (a per-officer, per-year breakdown was reported as $2,786 under a five-year lease), and that the contract is bundled so the vendor-level unit costs are not broken out in the packet provided to council.

Communications and 9-1-1 operations

Records and communications manager Audrey Verver outlined 2024 call-center performance and staffing. Verver said the city27s 9-1-1 center handled about 21,000 incoming calls in 2024 and that staff created roughly 75,000 calls for service in the CAD system (one incident can generate many calls). She said average call-processing time improved from about 178 seconds in 2022 to about 164 seconds in 2024, and that average staffing vacancies in the communications center fell from about nine in 2022 to about four in 2024; she noted there were five vacancies at the time of the briefing and that candidates were in the hiring pipeline.

Verver said language-line translation (Cercom/CAPCOG service) was used 891 times in 2024 for a total of 6,432 minutes, and she described a November 2024 pilot with Avail Solutions (a local-crisis triage contractor) that takes some mental-health calls away from dispatchers and provides local-resource navigation. She said Avail handles calls the department routes to it and transfers only those calls back to dispatchers for immediate in-person response when Avail determines a responder is required.

Mental-health response and the department27s MHO initiative

SMPD27s mental-health unit (MHU) leaders said mental-health calls remained a significant share of workload. Corporal Joe Osborne described the MHU staff and outreach work; Osborne and Chief Standridge emphasized active case management, follow-up and alternatives to emergency detention when clinically appropriate. Osborne and others reported about 2,290 mental-health calls in 2023 and roughly the same number in 2024; they said emergency detentions accounted for roughly 11% of mental-health calls in 2023 (259 emergency detentions) and about 13% in 2024 (290 emergency detentions).

Assistant Chief Brandon Wickenwerter said the department will pursue a campaign in 2025 to certify additional officers as mental-health officers under the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) program. He said the department plans to certify about 57 additional eligible officers so that, when combined with current mental-health officers, the department will have roughly 82 certified mental-health officers positioned across patrol, SROs and specialty units.

School resource officers and victim services

Sergeant Tony Scott described the department27s SRO program: five SROs cover San Marcos CISD campuses under a 2024 memorandum of understanding with the school district. Scott said recent student surveys reported predominantly positive or neutral experiences with SROs and that most students indicated they felt comfortable reporting crimes to SROs. Patty Homme and victim-services staff described continued victim services work: the victim-services team recorded over 2,200 case contacts in 2024 and worked with eight volunteers and external partners such as Hays Caldwell Women27s Center.

Public engagement and next steps

Speakers acknowledged areas needing additional public clarification. Chief Standridge and staff said they would release fuller data from a city advisory-panel engagement exercise and provide more detail on pursuit policy revisions and accreditation findings after the April on-site assessment. The department also announced a 12-month "dignity in policing" staff-development program starting the day after the briefing and encouraged council and the public to follow quarterly updates.

No formal council actions or votes on department policy or procurements were taken at the work session; the presentation functioned as a public briefing and a request for continued council oversight and budget consideration.