Yes, he has. And five apartment complexes in southwest Houston are going to see an influx of HPD officers:
When you look at the overall crime picture in the city, one-fourth of all the serious crime — the rapes, murders, aggravated assaults and robberies — occur in southwest Houston.
The Houston Police Department has beefed up its patrol in the area, but starting this weekend, the mayor has plans to take it one step further.
“I am pretty excited about it. There has been a lot of work that is gone into it in the last several weeks,” Mayor White said. “We haven’t been talking about it because its success depends on catching bad guys in some of these apartment complexes flat-footed.”
Houston police officers have been going undercover for weeks, arresting thousands.
But starting this weekend, the mayor and chief will unveil an unprecedented show of force at five southwest Houston apartment complexes: one in the 3700 block of Hillcroft, 8000 block of Creekbend, and in the 8100, 8900 and 10700 blocks of Fondren.
“I told the chief to use whatever amount of force is necessary, because districts 17, 18 and 19 — the crime stats are still unacceptable,” Mayor White said.
Each of the five complexes will have at least 10 uniformed HPD officers present 24 hours a day, something that has never been done here.
You’d think that if that bolded sentence were true, we would have heard about that before now. HPD has been arresting thousands???
The problem is that HPD is understaffed, which means any concentrated effort in one area is going to take officers away from another area; for example, the carjacking that left a toddler dead two nights ago happened in northeast Houston, and a father was killed in front of his son in north Houston this morning. Still, residents of southwest Houston will no doubt be grateful for the increased police presence.
It’s unclear if Mayor White ran his plan by Councilwoman Ada Edwards first. You’ll recall in February she said putting more officers on the street would turn Houston into a “police state.”
KEVIN WHITED ADDS: Thousands?! In a few weeks! That is really impressive. And it surely must be true (and not simply spin), since the mainstream media have fact checkers and editors to verify such matters. Right?
