From the Department of Conflicting Messages comes this report by KHOU-11’s Jeff McShan on downtown crime.
On the one hand, downtown sounds a little scary:
A Houston security guard said he was making his rounds at a park across from downtown’s Toyota Center at 3:40 a.m., when two men reportedly came toward him from across the street. He said they nearly scared him to death.
“That’s when they approached me, and one of them put a gun to my head,” said the guard, who didn’t want to be identified.
He said the men took off with his wallet and car keys.
“At that point, I panicked. I freaked out and ran,” said the guard. “I was on the radio yelling for backup and telling them that I was being robbed at gunpoint.”
On the other hand, it doesn’t sound so bad:
Going through three months of crime statistics, 11 News learned that robberies downtown, when compared to the rest of the city, are rare.
In fact, from September until the end of November of 2008, there were only 20 reported incidents. The majority of them happened between midnight at 3 a.m.
But the number of downtown car break-ins during the same time was much larger. There were 75 auto thefts reported and 155 car break-ins.
To refine this in terms of Chief Hurtt’s Dangerous Time/Place/Behavior theory of Houston crime, you should largely be fine downtown unless you are a security guard patrolling a property in the wee hours of the morning.
