http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5711246.html 2 found dead in car, making 8 Harris homicides in 2 days A single car crash led to the discovery of two fatally wounded men in northeast Houston late Thursday. The discovery of the two men in a car in the 4300 block of Tampico marked the seventh and eighth homicides since Wednesday in Harris County. The slayings included a murder-suicide involving a woman who was shot and killed in front of her two young sons, followed by a botched carjacking in which a mother suffered fatal stab wounds during a struggle to keep an attacker from driving away in an SUV with her 4-month-old daughter inside. Police said Houston's latest victims were found dead in a maroon Oldsmoblie Alero about 9 p.m. Both had been shot. "It began as a drug transaction between three men" at a nearby barber shop, said Sgt. Myron Dillingham, HPD Homicide. Police said one of the mortally wounded men managed to drive away from the barber shop at Glass and Tampico before losing control of the vehicle, driving through a ditch and crashing into a tree. Both men were pronounced dead at the scene and are believed to have lived in the neighborhood, Dillingham said. Authorities are searching for the gunman, who fled on foot. The Harris County Medical Examiner's Office has not released the name of the woman killed by a man on Wednesday in the 12000 block of Antoine. The man, who police have described as an ex-boyfriend, then killed himself. Two hours later, Tina Davila, 39, was stabbed to death during a carjacking as she protected her four-month-old daughter in the 5600 block of Uvalde. Her killer is still at large. About four hours later, police were called to the 8500 block of Broadway, where a man was shot to death at an apartment complex about 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Earlier that day, a convenience store attendant was shot to death by an armed robber in the 1400 block of W. Gulf Bank. And Thursday began with a man being stabbed to death in the 6800 block of the Gulf Freeway about 12:10 a.m. About seven hours later, another man was found beaten and stabbed to death at a southwest Houston construction site shortly before 8 a.m. All cases remain under investigation. Authorities ask anyone with information about these slayings to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-8477. ----------------- 8 homicides in 2 days is downright absurd. And several of these are just brutal, especially when kids are involved. did somebody switch our fair city with detroit while we were sleeping?
So are all major metropolitan areas experiencing this type of crime? I'm not doubting your assumption either by the way.
That's what I assumed so is the crime worse in other areas? I mean is it really fair to associate this with the recession?
true, but we are definitely not coming out of this unscathed. business may be doing well here in a relative sense, but the overall effects of a weakening dollar, gas and food prices soaring, tightening credit, and home foreclosures doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture here either. just a little prettier than most, i guess.
yeah this is an anomaly, i was just speaking more in general terms. there are studies that are done on the subject but I can't find anything recent. and as swtsig stated, if you're middle class or lower I don't care if you live in utopia, you're feeling the effects of this weak dollar vs. commodities.
I can tell you that Baltimore has experienced an almost 40% drop in homicides this quarter. However, this is likely due to a much better model for fighting violent crime that was put in place about a year ago. I'm very excited about this development, because the Baltimore homicide rate has historically remained stubbornly high, even when other large metropolitan areas saw sharp decreases during the last 10-15 years. For a long time, I've wanted Baltimore to adopt something akin to the "Boston model" that focuses law enforcement resources on arresting and convicting with long prison sentences, the relatively small percentage of the criminal population that commits violent crimes with handguns. When Boston took this approach, I believe they dropped their homicide rate to around 100 per year, while Baltimore has remained in the high 200s for as long as I can remember. And Boston is a bigger city than Baltimore.
I can't tell you about Houston, but Port Arthur has had a significant increase in violent crime, and I think I understand the reasoning for it. Port Arthur is having an industrial construction boom, and with it, an enormous number of temporary workers have moved into the area. The temporary workers are disproportionately young and lower class (but with significant recent income). They've brought with them a significant increase in small crime. Combined with that, jobs created from industrial expansion has picked off a bunch of the best cops. The cops are stretched thin, and all crime is up because of it. Of course, the city council's misguided gun buyback program is making it worse, but root is the understaffed police department.
Houston has one of the highest crime rates in the USA. Why anyone finds this information surprising is beyond me. Houston is a melting pot, combined with ilegals and Katrina criminals.
