The Chronicle‘s Rosanna Ruiz today reports that statistics back up what most Houstonians know to be true about Houston’s surge in crime (unless they’ve been listening to the spin coming from MayorWhiteChiefHurtt):
Violent crime in Houston increased at nearly twice the national level for the first half of this year, compared with the same period last year, a preliminary FBI report indicates.
Nationwide, robberies were up by almost 10 percent, killings increased 1.4 percent and aggravated assaults increased 1.2 percent, while rapes decreased less than 0.1 percent. Overall, violent crime increased in all four regions of the country from January to June this year, compared with the same period last year.
Violent crimes, including killings and rapes, rose by 5.9 percent in Houston, the report indicates, compared with 3.7 percent nationwide. Killings in Houston during that period rose by a staggering 28 percent — from 158 last year to 202 this year. Rapes, aggravated assaults and property crimes all remained at about the same level.
Elsewhere in Texas, violent crimes in Dallas, El Paso and Lubbock remained about the same.
As both Cory Crow and Laurence Simon point out, there are multiple factors that help to explain this surge in crime: HPD’s lack of manpower (that came about from politicians ignoring what was a looming problem for years), the Katrina influx, a rise in organized gang activity (possibly with Latin American ties), questionable management of the police department by the Mayor’s handpicked soft-on-crime police chief (who retreats to Phoenix on weekends), declining morale in the department as a result of Chief Hurtt’s management, and Houston’s growing population.
If Mayor White is seriously considering running for statewide elected office in Texas (and most people think he is), it’s baffling that he hasn’t taken more of a hands-on, activist approach to Houston’s crime problems, starting with sending his bumbling, ineffective police chief back to Arizona fulltime and installing a police chief that both he and the rank and file can work with to tackle the problem. It’s not too late for him to take that approach, we suppose, although other priorities and gimmicks (SAFEclear, citywide wifi, red-light cameras, electric provider choice websites, don’t-give-to-the-homeless campaigns, affordable housing partnerships, the downtown park, etc) always seem to rank higher.
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