Following a After a high-profile shooting near the newly renovated Hemisfair District and a rise in complaints from residents and business owners, the District 1 councilwoman came up with a seemingly simple solution: removing Hemisfair from the downtown public areas exempt from the city’s 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. park curfew.
But last Thursday The failed vote to approve the idea suggests that city leaders are far from reaching agreement on how to address public safety concerns downtown..
The discussion turned into one of the most passionate council debates of the year, with members divided over who law enforcement should protect and what it means to feel safe in public spaces.
The ordinance, drafted by City Councilwoman Sukh Kaur, would have allowed people found to be in the park after hours to be charged with a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a $500 fine.
However, to accommodate the apartment complex and businesses in the Hemisfair neighborhood, it said people could be exempt from violating the curfew if they walked their dog or walked through the park to a destination in the area, including an open store, their hotel, their apartment or their car.
“People came to us after a series of violent crimes in the spring and requested additional security protocols for Hemisfair Park,” Kaur said, explaining her proposal.
However, critics of the curfew said the exemptions would have allowed police to profile people based on whether or not they were allowed to be in the park after opening time.
“The discretion issue means that police decide when and how to enforce the curfew,” said Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2). “…An officer may see a little old lady and determine that she is not a threat…but if you see a young black man in a hoodie doing the same thing, they may feel compelled to make sure he is supposed to be there.”
The proposal was postponed indefinitely after Police Chief William McManus told council that his data indicated there was no public safety problem at all in the park.
“There are very, very few calls about crime,” he told the San Antonio Report in a July interview. “We even went outside of Hemisfair and checked the numbers, and there was no violent crime.”
After almost all council members had expressed their opinion on Thursday, Mayor Ron Nirenberg concluded that the proposal was “not yet mature.”
“This is clearly not a solution to the challenges we want to address,” said Nirenberg.
Open to new ideas
On Friday morning, some business owners around Hemisfair said they were disappointed that their issue had been postponed but were open to other possible solutions.
“If the police chief believes that a curfew will not solve the concerns of renters and residents, I trust his judgment,” said Andres Andujar, CEO of Hemisfair, who was drinking coffee on the patio of Commonwealth Coffee.
Andujar said he hears from residents of the Hemisfair ’68 apartment complex about noise in the middle of the night from troublemakers in the nearby playground and from loud, drunken visitors walking back to their hotels.
Maxim Lang, manager of Commonwealth Coffee, said businesses often call the police for petty crime and vagrancy. and often the police don’t arrive in time. He suggested more foot patrols to speed up response times.
But if Thursday’s meeting is any indication, City Council members have a lot of work ahead of them when it comes to addressing the concerns of the growing neighborhood.
And downtown will only continue to expand due to new construction plans, long-overdue historic renovations and infrastructure improvements, the construction of a new baseball stadium and possibly a Spurs arena.
The city has already increased police patrols and lighting in the Hemisfair area, and some council members say Hemisfair Park already receives significantly more attention than other parts of the city.
“The East Side feels like they haven’t felt safe in their homes for many years and we haven’t acted quickly,” said Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4), who represents the far southwest of the city.
Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5), who represents the southwest part of the city, said efforts to kick people out of the park at night would contribute to “further privatization of public spaces.”
Other parks exempt from the city’s curfew include Alamo Plaza, Market Square, La Villita and part of the River Walk.
“My constituents visit Hemisfair Park often and always ask, ‘How can we replicate this in District 5?’ Because it’s a safe park. It’s an attractive park,” Castillo said.
