Houston Police Chief Wants to Increase Force

Hurtt's plan: More police on the streets
To accomplish that, HPD's chief says he'll hire recruits, rehire retired officers

By MÓNICA GUZMÁN
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Police Chief Harold Hurtt will bring officers out of retirement and hire recruits before they've completed training as part of a series of initiatives announced Friday to address a manpower shortage that has plagued the Houston Police Department for more than a year.

Responding to a week of criticism that followed a deadly Thanksgiving holiday weekend with 14 homicides across the city, Hurtt also said he will adjust schedules and quadruple the department's overtime budget to get more officers onto the streets immediately.

Flanked by his command staff at a news conference, Hurtt acknowledged that the job would not be easy.

In the last two years, some 700 officers have left the department, many through retirement.

"We have lost 700 people-plus and the population's increasing — we just picked up another 150 to 200,000 people from Louisiana. So we have some significant challenges," Hurtt said.

Houston Police Officers Union President Hans Marticiuc called Hurtt's initiatives "a step in the right direction" but said he was "uncomfortable" with rehiring as many as 50 retired officers.

Hurtt's handling of the shortage became the subject of intense criticism Monday, when the union released a report indicating that response times to some 500 calls about property crimes and assaults from three police districts took officers anywhere from 90 minutes to 12 hours.

The report raised concerns that Houston's crime could rise along with its population unless the department puts more officers on the streets.

Crime rate down

On Friday, Hurtt reiterated what a department spokesman said earlier this week, that the city's overall crime rate was down and that citywide response times to more serious crimes are "reasonable."

Topping Hurtt's initiatives is a $4 million overtime program that will begin to place officers in high-crime areas and apartment complexes this month.

"We will select a couple of those locations and have a very intensive program for about three months and do an evaluation, then decide where we go from there," Hurtt said.

The chief did not identify the apartment complexes.

Hurtt said an overtime program has been in discussion for months.

Three-quarters of the $4 million came from other areas of the police budget, including insurance and retirement.

Perhaps, as money grows tighter for municipalities as well as states and the fed, we will witness a return to sanity on the size of the bureaucracies in government. Do we really need so many mid-level managers? Do we truly need such large bureaucracies to support the services the cities provide? It is time for the American and indeed Houston taxpayers to pay more attention to how and where your money is being spent. Most services that the city provides do not require the huge number of supervisors, administrators and administrative assistants who make up the governmental bureaucracies. American Taxpayers-WAKE UP!

Full Story: Nice Move By Chief Cop

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