Come On Chief, It's Not the Time for Political Correctness

Face of homicides changing, HPD says Killings up 23%;
chief is reluctant to blame evacuees

By MÓNICA GUZMÁN and CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

An upward swing in the city's homicide rate — up by nearly a quarter from last year —isn't the only thing concerning Houston police. Officers say they are seeing more stranger-on-stranger crime, a resurgence of gang activity and more violence around apartment complexes, especially those swelled with an influx of Katrina evacuees.

Though officials acknowledged that at least eight of the homicides involved hurricane evacuees, Houston Police Department Chief Harold Hurtt said Wednesday that it was incorrect to assume that "the reason that crime is up in the last quarter of this year is evacuees from Louisiana. A lot of this is (attributed) to homegrown citizens."

To date, 324 homicides have been reported this year, unofficially, compared with 263 in the same period in 2004, he said. That's up more than 23 percent.

Most of the spike has come since mid-November, when 14 homicides were reported during the four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Police and city officials, who said they already had been aware of an increase in crime since earlier this year, then launched a series of initiatives intended to increase police presence in high-crime areas.

Late last month and under pressure from city officials concerned about police manpower, Hurtt instituted a $4 million overtime program designed to free up officers for patrol duty.

And last week, the chief announced an initiative to "dramatically" increase patrols in five of the most crime-ridden local apartment complexes.

Overall crime is down

Though violent crime is up 2.3 percent through November of this year compared with the same period last year, HPD officials said overall crime is down 2.2 percent.

In recent months, violent crimes appear to be on a dramatic rise, and police say, is undergoing some disturbing changes.

Fifty-one homicides were reported in November and December — a 70 percent increase from the same period last year, Hurtt said.

Hurtt also said he has seen a "tremendous change" in how killers and victims are acquainted. Twenty to 25 years ago, most killings involved friends or family members, but that is no longer the case — and it's making murders harder to solve, he said.

Sorry folks, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. It may not be a pleasant thing to contemplate, we always like to believe the best of people, but considering the timing of this upsurge and the infusion of so many refugees from New Orleans, it hardly seems a coincidence. I suspect that there are a lot of territorial battles going on between locals and the former denizens of New Orleans' mean streets. Remember most of those refugees were unable to flee because they didn't have cars. They come from the poorest and consequently the highest crime rate areas of New Orleans. It's time for Mayor White to pull a "Rudy" and order the crackdown on all crimes, minor and major. It worked in New York and it will work here.

Full Story: Refugees Arrival's Confluence With Higher Crime No Coincidence

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