After a rash of shootings, stabbings and drug activity spanning months in Austin's downtown entertainment district, police are adjusting operations to tamp down a growing trend of violent crime in the area.

While violent crime throughout the city has been on the downward slope, the city has seen increases in such offenses as aggravated assault and robberies in downtown areas, including the popular nightlife hubs of Sixth Street, Rainey Street, the Red River District and Fourth Street, which are inside the Police Department’s Downtown Area Command.

Since the beginning of the year, police officers have recorded 107 aggravated assaults in the downtown area, including 28 shootings, according to the department. Officers also responded to 19 stabbings and arrested 22 people for unlawfully carrying a weapon plus 10 felons who were in possession of a firearm.

As the area becomes more densely populated, with high-traffic venues spreading farther out, police have decided to redraw boundaries to focus their efforts on the heart of the district. Assistant Police Chief Justin Newsom said the department has cut the size of the downtown area command by several blocks to make officers working in the area more effective.

In the past, the area stretched from Lamar Boulevard east to Chicon Street and from Cesar Chavez Street north to 12th Street. That entire area includes bars and stretches of popular restaurants and clubs, but the section east of Interstate 35 has a more diverse landscape of single-family homes and small businesses, Newsom said.

"The first thing we’re doing is reducing the size of the geography. (The Downtown Area Command) includes an equally large section east of the interstate that runs east of Red River to 12th and Chicon streets. All the neighborhoods over there, (they're) a different kind of policing to what a downtown entertainment district needs," he said.

Now, the downtown command's area will stop at the westbound edge of Interstate 35, essentially cutting off everything east of the highway, which will be covered by patrol officers from surrounding sectors. Police responded to at least four shootings within the new boundary in the last two weeks of July alone.

Newsom said the department is beefing up its capability in the area by transferring six positions formerly assigned to the Highway Response Team to downtown. Those officers used to work on high-speed roadways from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Now, they will work a variety of evening shifts in the downtown area, where all officers are required to be on foot or bikes.

Those changes, Newsom said, will be permanent, but officials have temporarily cut the district even further during a six-week initiative they hope will yield big changes. The effort began Aug. 1, and in its first five days, downtown officers responded to 605 calls for service and made 45 arrests, including 13 for narcotics-related offenses.

Though more precise figures from the department on the success of the initiative were not immediately available, Newsom said officers have seen a positive effect from the effort. Austin police from specialized gang, organized crime and narcotics units also continue to work in the area.

“It’s had an effect. We’ve recovered multiple guns (and) made multiple arrests for aggravated assault,” Newsom said. “It's still too soon to tell, we haven't fully analyzed the data yet, but we are seeing some good work being done at least.”

Newsom said Austin police conduct similar initiatives throughout the year, but in this case, leaders hope the changes will result in a sustained reduction in violent crime. However, policing such a large but tightly packed area remains a challenge.

"It hard with limited resources to police an area as dense as downtown," Newsom said.

"You look at shootings during SXSW, and there were 200 cops within a half of a mile of Sixth Street and one of the shootings happened directly across from a police barricade," he said. "There's no magic bullet."