I just found an AP story that said Houston had a total of 379 murders in 2006 up by 55 total in 2005, but all other violent crimes dropped between 2 and 9 percent each during the same time period. http://nobulletin.blogspot.com/2007/01/extra-houston-murder-rate-climbs.html
PLLLLLEase Compared to other small cities and counties in other parts of the world like for instance Europe,Middle East,Africa,Asia; Houston ain't **** compared to being hardcore 'city of god' like violence. Just be fortunate enough to live in America, and not have your little niece,cousin or brother being strapped with an ak-47 and some grenades. I wouldn't want to work at a sweatshop factory at 12 yrs of age.
Before Katrina, Houston was listed on the top 25 Safest Cities with Populations over 300,000. 1 year later, it was on the 25 most dangerous. Rudy Gulliani really cleaned up NYC, ask anyone who lived there during his entire reign. He is responsible for making Times Square Visitor Friendly, cleaning up the subways, and reducing crime. Really had done a great job there.
Just use your common sense. There are places in NYC, LA, Chicago, etc... that you wouldn't walk around in alone at 2 AM...same goes for Houston. Generally it's a pretty safe city. That said, Alief has gone to absolute ****. I used to live around the area, and it was a pretty middle-class, low-crime area...these days, not so. Alief and the rest of SW Houston are probably the worst part of town these days.
where was it listed that way? i don't remember that. i think houstonians have selective memory. i keep hearing about this crime-free utopia i lived in before katrina. i lived here for about 30 years and don't remember said utopia.
me either, but i had a break in 3 weeks after i got my new car. the dam thing still had paper plates! my poor baby. but a buddy of mine had his truck stolen at 5 in the afternoon a couple years ago. broad daylight! amazing. my buddy even called his cell, which was in the truck, and the dude answered and of course played dumb. Best part was after he got the truck back (24 hrs later and no damage) the guy who stole the truck left his f*ck action 28 (i forget the exact number)CD in the deck. lol. story doesnt end. He got his truck stolen about 8 months ago again. Middle of the day, at a parking garage in the med center. He never got it back.
We had two cars stolen out of our driveway when we lived in Houston. In addition, thieves tried to steal my wife's Firebird during game 1 of the 1986 Astros-Mets playoff series at the dome. Fortunately the crack Astrodome security force prevented it from happening.
Every Year CNN posts a list of the top 25 safest and 25 most dangerous large Cities to live in. Because I live in DFW, I immediately noticed that Houston had a safer crime rate than Dallas, Ft. Worth, and Arlington. If it didn't, I'd hear about it at work...just gives me more fodder to throw back in my employers face when he (constantly) talks crap about Houston.
My experience with crime was WAY bigger in Texas than anywhere else. Dunno if I'd be able to single out Houston, but I guess I had more bad things happen in less time. I was robbed 4 times in Houston, had a car stolen there. The cops found it but it was never the same again, since the guys had taken it to a coin-op car wash and sprayed the whole inside with water. Cars vandalized many times in Corpus; windows smashed several times. Robbed twice in Corpus Christi. Not to mention random brandishing of weapons and a few poorly aimed (thank god) shots. Barfights, either seen or forced to participate in Houston (and Corpus). Mugged once in New Orleans. Never had these things happen in LA or Israel, or any places I've spent time in (Middle East/Europe/Africa/Latin America/Japan) but it might be attributed to "learning my lesson" and just getting older and mellower. I dunno. But that's been my subjective experience. I still found people trying to rip me of in nearly every place (LA by far the worse, but then Los Angeles IS a 3rd world country): cab drivers, homeless, street hustlers, whatever. Sometimes there's not much you can do about it, like a cab driver that overcharges you and speaks no english. It's also important to point out I lived in FAR worse neighborhoods as an adult than I did as a kid. Some of the worst things that happened to me were in West Houston and Padre Island, not downtown LA or South Tel Aviv, even if life in general wasn't as...um...easy. There are two asterisks. *Japan. Unless you consider underaged girls flashing you from under their skirts when you go up escalators, then no, I encountered no crime there, and even the homeless people are organized and have homespun industry. I encountered no beggars or hustlers. My girlfriend (at the time) got groped a lot on crowded trains and it REALLY bothered her. Sometimes she'd cry in the train. I can understand that it sucks, and I always argued that it wasn't THAT big of a deal. She'd call me an insensitive moron, etc. *Egypt. Years later I was in Sinnai. It was about 6 weeks ago, and it was completely dead. All the beach camps and resorts had skeleton staffs and were empty. The UK, US, and Israel governments had all been telling people not to go there because of Al-Quida. They blew up a hotel there a few years ago, and supposedly its getting worse, but Eilat (right across the border in Israel) got suicide bombed shortly after everyone was told to go there in stead because it was safer. But I always had good experiences in Sinnai, the Bedouin and Sudanese refugees who work there were good, honest people. Osama bin Laden shouldn't deprive them of their $500 a month. I wasn't afraid of Al-Quida, but I guess the rest of Israel was. It made me feel a bit...edgy. Kind of hard to appreciate a vacation place that everyone is too afraid to vacation in. I mean I was hoping to meet a girl or something. On my second night, when I was drinking tequila on the beach in front of my little thatched hut, a toothless Bedouin invited me to follow him (we had maybe 6 collective understood words between his english and my arabic). It was mostly hand signals, and what not. Sure, why not? Bedouin are always hospitable and like drinking tea with people. They're just kind of cool like that. His hut had an open pit to light fires in, and not much else. Well, he had a cat and a makeshift bed on the floor made from mats. He started a fire and gave me an AM transistor radio from the 70's to turn on for entertainment. Then he sticks a kettle in the fire, and makes tea (bedouin "cook" their coffee and tea and add cardamon and other stuff to it...) Then he whips out a giant bag of hash and starts mixing it with tobacco and smoking it. I try to explain that I don't do drugs anymore, but he gets very very upset about it. So I offer some tequila, which he drinks. Well, at this point, we aren't saying much. I'm tired, bored, and buzzed, he's high and drunk. Then, I needed to pee. Suffice to say, there's no plumbing there, so I go outside, and notice, a full lunar eclipse. So I motion him over and point to the eclipse. He says something, and stumbles back inside, and I pee on a shrub. I just keep looking up at the moon, becasue it's amazing. In mid-pee, I jump about a foot off the ground, pissing all over my feet. The Bedouin had come up from behind, and rubbed himself up against me. I turn around, and ask "Ok, what the **** was that?" And then, he ran away. I was cool for a few minutes, and then I was *seriously* creeped out. Like "Doctor can you please give more Xanax" creeped out and I realize what a jerk I was to my ex-girlfriend...now that I know how that feels. I left the next morning, dehydrated in the desert with a bad hangover. I drank 3 liters of water. On the long bus ride from the border to Tel Aviv, I suddenly had to pee. Bad. After about 10 minutes I had a panic attack. I forced the bus driver to let me off, and found myself in the middle of the Negev desert, and I swear to god I pissed about 10 times. I tried hitching but no one wanted to pick me up, becasue I was dressed like a Sinnai tourist, wearing all the lightweight cotton bedouin clothes Israelis wear to the beach there, including a big Bedouin doorag on my head to keep my hair and the sun out of my eyes. I had not shaved in three months. And I had my guitar with me, in a hard case. I can only imagine what I must have looked like from a distance. Israelis like hippies. I did not look like a hippie. Then the sun went down. This is high desert. It got DAMN COLD. My soft beach clothes were not so ideal. I stood shivering until about 10 pm, when another bus stopped. The driver wouldn't let me on the bus, and asked me in Arabic if I spoke Hebrew. I said "yes" and then he asked me in hebrew if I had any weapons. Then he made me show him my guitar case, asked me a few more questions and after hearing my bad hebrew understood I was just a ****ed up American and he let me on the bus, and I was back home 6 hours later. After a few days, urination no longer became a stress-inducing activity. And that's the worst crime I've been victimized by outside Texas, other than being mugged for $20 in the French Quarter when I was 18. So yeah, Houston is bad. The chances you will be a victim of a home robbery or burglarly are pretty high, but you'll probably never be groped by a high Bedouin tribesman if you try to piss out half a bottle of tequila, on a tree, under a full lunar eclipse.
