Now that television stations are reporting a spike in violent crime and MayorWhiteChiefHurtt can no longer ignore HPD’s manpower shortage, it’s not surprising that the Mayor’s press office has turned to the previously disinterested Chronicle Editorial LiveJournalists to trumpet the administration’s short-term “fixes” for the problem:
The mayor has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide $6.5 million for a police task force to focus on troubled areas. This would be a good use of federal funds.
The White administration is expected to push an ordinance next year that will require apartment complexes registering a high number of calls for police assistance to hire in-house security officers to protect residents. Such a law would allow for round-the-clock deterrence and law enforcement in high crime areas and make maximum use of regular police patrols.
It’s only fair that apartment complex owners reaping increased revenues from storm-induced high occupancy rates should shoulder their share of the increased security costs. Their residents — and the city — will be safer from the threat of criminal activity. Vigorous anticrime measures are essential to making the rise in homicides a statistical anomaly rather than a long-term trend.
It would be lovely if Mayor White could con the federal government into supplying funds to rectify the HPD manpower shortage he inherited and largely ignored until recently, but a “task force” isn’t much of a solution to the problem.
And Mayor White’s notion of effectively privatizing policing for people who have the misfortune to live in high-crime areas is as offensive as his (and Dan Patrick’s) original SAFEclear notion that people without $75 should stay off of local freeways.
The Editorial LiveJournalists (like MayorWhiteChiefHurtt) really haven’t been that interested in HPD’s manpower shortage over the last few years. If this is all they have to offer, maybe they shouldn’t have bothered. But then, they do have Sedosi’s nickname of Mrs. White to live up to.
RELATED: Mayor White’s plan for crime — let other people pay for it! (Lone Star Times).
PREVIOUSLY: Murders skyrocket; HPD chief says good luck protecting yourselves, Continuing the discussion of HPD’s woes.
