KTRK-13’s Andy Cerota reports on a homeowner in southwest Houston who thinks the city of Houston is failing in its most basic obligation: public safety.
According to Cerota, Deidre Rasheed’s southwest Houston home has been robbed and trashed four times in 45 days.
Now, she’s giving in and planning on moving. But not before directing this towards municipal leaders:
Rasheed said, “No TV, cut wires. The police came — didn’t take fingerprints, didn’t take any samples to see, to do any follow up investigation. They just left.”
Rasheed wants more patrols in her neighborhood but understands that might be difficult since there’s a shortage of officers working the streets. She blames city leaders for that — arguing they’ve sacrificed citizen safety to balance the budget.
“The officers don’t have that manpower,” Rasheed admitted. “But at the same time, where does the buck stop? Who takes responsibility for this type of action within our government?”
As we’ve been pointing out for a while, HPD’s ongoing manpower shortages have not been a priority for Mayor White and his Council. They continue to ignore the problem, declining to fund new cadet classes capable of resolving the shortages even as they find time and resources to expend on priorities such as Tasers and a new downtown park.
The city’s only newspaper has not been interested in the HPD manpower issues (they have other priorities as well), and other media outlets (notably, KHOU-11, but now KTRK-13) have only nibbled around the edges.
Unfortunately, once Rasheed’s misfortune becomes more widespread in the city and the major media discover this “problem,” HPD’s manpower shortages will be so acute that it will take several years of cadet classes to have an impact. That’s why it’s well past time for Mayor White and his Council to begin to deal with the problem.
Yes, we’ve been harping on HPD’s manpower issues for a while now, and we’ll likely continue. But, we’re only a little blog, albeit one that some local media folks and pols read. In case those particular readers are wondering — public safety is always a good story/issue. We’re happy to give it to ya’ll without credit, if it means a safer city. By all means, run with it!
