Fort Worth is ‘a very safe city,’ police chief says after a violent weekend
Fort Worth Police Chief Eddie Garcia talked about new plans in the works to address violent crime after a deadly weekend with four separate homicides, including a shooting at a bar in the city’s West 7th district that killed one man and injured five other victims.
“What often gets forgotten is the overall crime stats of the city that our violent crime continues to go down,” Garcia said during a news conference Monday.
Fort Worth is a “very safe city,” and the police department’s “men and women are working extremely hard to ensure this community is safe,” the chief said.
Fort Worth police investigated three homicides on Friday, Oct 3. Those killings included a stabbing near Polytechnic High School that killed a 15-year-old student and critically injured his father, a shooting that killed an 18-year-old woman during a dispute over a minor car accident in a restaurant parking lot, and shooting that killed a gas station employee during a reported robbery.
After the violence on Friday, “we brought an all-hands-on-deck approach for the weekend to make sure that we have visibility and presence in our communities,” Garcia said. Police said officers increased their patrols in higher-crime areas of the city.
The violent weekend continued when a 31-year-old man was shot to death and five people were wounded about 1:40 a.m. Sunday inside nightclub Social LIVV, at 3005 Bledsoe St. Police said their preliminary investigation indicates the shooting was gang-related.
“As it pertains to the violence and the murder that occurred (in the West 7th district), we’re going to be looking at our bars and bar owners to ensure they’re operating responsibly,” Garcia said.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission suspended Social LIVV’s license to sell alcohol for seven days, Garcia said. The city will work with the state to enforce dance hall permits and take a close look at irresponsible bar owners and club promoters, he said.
As of Tuesday morning, suspects have been arrested in the Friday shooting deaths of 18-year-old Jenny Rosales and 28-year-old Chandrashekar Pole, and a suspect has been questioned about the stabbing death of 15-year-old Jacob De La Rosa.
No suspects had been arrested in the club shooting, which killed Patrique Allen. Investigators believe that Allen, who was a documented gang member, was the target of the shooting and the other victims were bystanders.
A fifth homicide occurred Monday night, when a man was stabbed to death during a fight at a convenience store on Camp Bowie West Boulevard, police said. No suspect was in custody as of Tuesday morning.
Fort Worth Crime Plan 2.0
The police department is bringing in criminologists in the coming weeks to develop a new “Crime Plan 2.0,” that fits the city of Fort Worth to ensure that “the men and women that sacrifice so much for the communities, that we put them in the right places for them to succeed,” Garcia said.
The Police Department is working to ensure it has everything needed to keep residents and visitors safe and to strengthen its response to future incidents, said Garcia, who previously served as Dallas police chief and was sworn in as Fort Worth’s new chief on Sept. 16.
“There have been extraordinary measures on 7th Street to reduce crime in that area as well. One weekend does not make a trend. But we’re not going to sit on our hands,” Garcia said. “Having said that, again, we look back as a team to see what we can do better and to ensure that our community, our businesses and the criminal element knows that we take these things seriously.”
Garcia, who worked as a homicide investigator earlier in his career, said, “I completely understand how these weekends impact our men and women that are investigating these cases. We’re going to support them as much as we can.”
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Residents react to violence
Residents and visitors to the West 7th area reacted to news of the shooting on Sunday.
Michelle Watkins, 35, saw about the shooting on Facebook and thought, “Oh, wow, another senseless crime,” she told the Star-Telegram.
“It (gun violence) also is recurring; you see this kind of periodically,” Watkins said. “I guess the everyday civilians are kind of getting numb to this.”
Jordan Williams, 25, said she feels sad for the victims.
“It’s just a really tragic thing that happened,” Williams said. “You don’t think that you’re gonna go out and have a good night and not expect to come back in the morning.”
Williams, who lives in the entertainment district west of downtown Fort Worth, said it is a “pretty safe neighborhood during the week, but people that come from outside of the neighborhood on the weekends, that’s what makes it kind of dangerous.”
“But once Friday, Saturday and sometimes Sunday hit, it just turns into a completely different type of town,” she said.
This story was originally published October 6, 2025 at 5:22 PM.