Mayor White’s communications shop certainly is effective at getting good press for the Mayor.
Take this press release story for KHOU-11 by Wendell Edwards:
A new program has put more Houston Police officers out on the streets, and it’s making a difference according to Houston’s mayor.
Houston policeman Jeffrey Oliver has only been on the force for three years, but in that short time he said he’s seen it all.
“You have a lot more aggravated robberies, carjackings, a lot of homicides a lot of shootings in progress… that we respond to out here,” Officer Oliver said.
He’s a part of the Neighborhood Enforcement Team Task force program.
“Working on the west side and coming over here is like night and day,” he said.
It’s a program that has put the equivalent of 150 additional officers on the street by paying overtime.
The N.E.T.T. Program is not even a month old yet, and Mayor Bill White said there is proof that it is working.
In the two and half weeks since it started, police have written more than 900 citations and arrested 169 people. That’s an average of 10 arrests a day.
That sounds great, and certainly nobody can object to the increased manpower, but the story isn’t complete because it offers no baseline for comparison. Did it not strike anyone at KHOU that the citation and arrest statistics aren’t that informative if statistics from other points in time and other neighborhoods aren’t provided?
As far as fighting crime with acronyms — we’re more inclined towards the Bauer Solution.
