Houston's homicides up nearly 25% in 2006

Very sad statistics to say the least. Houston is quickly becoming a very dangerous city to live in. A couple of interesting facts include 85% of all homicide victims were black or Hispanic, and the enormous impact the Katrina evacuees had on crime in Houston.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3764822.html

City's homicides up nearly 25% in 2006
With 90 so far, year is on pace to be deadliest in more than a decade

By ROMA KHANNA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The number of homicides in Houston rose nearly 25 percent during the first three months of 2006, compared with the same period last year, despite a multimillion-dollar police effort in the city's most crime-ridden areas.

The Houston Police Department investigated 90 homicides through Friday, compared with 73 in the first quarter of 2005, police say. That puts the city on track for the deadliest year in more than a decade and would erase the last of the gains made in the 1990s, when the city's homicide tally was cut in half.

The carnage this year reflects the same trends that police publicized in 2005 after a bloody Thanksgiving weekend and a spate of homicides involving Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans. Police late in the year increased officer overtime pay to focus on the danger, primarily, in southwest Houston apartment complexes and the increased menace of gang violence.

But a Houston Chronicle analysis of 326 homicides that occurred in the city last year shows that those trends were obvious long before the first evacuee-related slaying and the year-end spike that prompted Police Chief Harold Hurtt to direct resources and public attention to these problem areas.

Hurtt last week admitted that HPD was slow to identify the patterns. But he blamed a staffing shortage that grew worse over the last year and outmoded tools for crime analysis.

"We were behind the curve as far as resources," he said. "We need to do a better job of continuously identifying and even forecasting trends. But you need (technology) and you need personnel to be able to respond."

One in three Houston homicides last year occurred in apartment complexes, the leading location for killings in each month of 2005, according to the newspaper's findings.

Specifically in southwest Houston, the Chronicle found, two police patrol districts were the most violent in the city, accounting for one in five homicides last year.

Yet those districts had the lowest police presence of any in the city, according to an internal HPD study of manpower distribution. It was not until last month that Hurtt, who has been grappling with a manpower shortage throughout the department because of a large number of retirements, added 20 officers to patrol the southwest's Fondren area.

The already high rate of homicides there grew in the final months of last year, at the same time the population in southwest Houston was swelling with Katrina evacuees. The spike in apartment crime helped double the number of homicides in December, compared with 2004. By year's end, police had investigated 336 killings, a 22 percent increase over the previous year.

Ten of those homicides occurred prior to 2005, but because they were investigated last year, 336 is the figure reported to the FBI as the city's official homicide total.

Evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, who began arriving in Houston after the Aug. 29 landfall, were the victims or suspects in 18 homicides. That was 13 percent of the slayings that occurred between September and December.

Yet Houston City Councilman Adrian Garcia, a former HPD officer, noted that HPD would have seen an increase in homicides without the evacuees.

"We would still have 700 to 1,000 officers less than what we should have, would still be dealing with homicide increases, and gangs and apartment complexes would still be issues," he said.


'I lost them both'
Those affected by the grim tally, either from living amid the violence or losing someone to it, question why police did not see it coming.

Jessie Coleman, a 70-year-old woman who raised seven children on the city's southeast side, lost her grandson and son in unrelated slayings that occurred within a 12-hour period in early October.

Her grandson, 22-year-old Jermon Lynch, argued with gang members and was shot in the parking lot of a southwest Houston apartment complex where two other people, including a police officer, were killed last year. The family was grieving Lynch's death at Coleman's home when a 16-year-old neighbor pulled a gun during an argument in the street and killed her son, 42-year-old Robert Coleman.

"I lost them both and for no reason," Coleman said. "I got to feeling that no one is safe. When you see that the violence is continuing — something must be done."

The Chronicle reviewed records including offense reports, public statements, court documents and property records, to identify trends among the 326 killings that occurred in 2005. The analysis revealed patterns that, according to police, hold true in this year's homicides:

•Gang violence increased early in 2005 and contributed to 47 homicides, more than 14 percent of the total killings.
•Arguments, ranging from conflicts over drugs to petty fights, were the leading cause of homicides.
•Men between the ages of 19 and 28 were the most likely to be killed.
•Blacks and Hispanics were the victims in 85 percent of homicides.
•Guns were used in more than 80 percent of the slayings.
After the homicide rate surged in November and December, Hurtt launched a series of initiatives, including two overtime programs, estimated to cost $10.5 million, to target crime hot spots and a program to increase apartment complex security. But residents and community activists, familiar with the tendency for violence in apartments and other pockets of southwest Houston, questioned why the problems did not prompt action sooner.

"For some reason, our area has been a stepchild for a long time," said Jim Myers, a Fondren-area community leader.

The president of the Houston Police Officers' Union said the department, with ranks depleted by the retirement of some 700 officers, could not have acted sooner.

"Some of these trends have been flying under the radar," Hans Marticiuc said. "It certainly is a problem for those that were victims, but even if they had been recognized, we could not have done anything because of manpower."

Hurtt added that a lack of crime analysis capabilities meant that HPD did not identify patterns among the homicides "in a timely enough manner to be proactive."

To meet that need, Hurtt for the first time has appointed a captain to oversee the analysis of crime statistics. The chief receives updates on crime in the city's police divisions every five days — up from 45-day intervals between such briefings when he joined the department.

Hurtt said the initiatives and reassigned officers have not had time to have full impact.

"There have been too many (homicides)," he said, "but it will take some time for us to see results."

Myers, a Fondren-area homeowner for 38 years, knows well the problems in the sprawling apartment complexes that line major thoroughfares in southwest Houston. He has witnessed poor security, gang and drug turf battles and a historic lack of proactive efforts by the city and police.

"We have more of these groups of apartments concentrated in our area than any other area of Houston, and their problems are not new," Myers said. "Someone should have seen this coming."


Fewer officers

Residents for years have protested inadequate police presence in southwest Houston.

An HPD study completed last year showed that the southwest and Fondren patrol divisions have fewer than one officer per 1,000 people. In contrast, the south central division, which is south and east of downtown, has nearly two officers per 1,000 people.

Citywide, Houston averages 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents. Other major U.S. cities have between 2.4 and 4.7 officers per 1,000 people, according to a recent New York Times article.

Long before HPD began its publicity campaign, apartments were already the most violent places in the city. For example, 45 percent of the homicides in February 2005 occurred in apartment complexes.

Among those killed was 27-year-old Kofi Appiah, the stepson of a Ghanaian immigrant who helped run his stepmother's grocery store and planned to follow his cousins into the Navy. On Feb. 7, 2005, Appiah was visiting his girlfriend in a southwest Houston complex when he argued with another man, possibly over her.

The suspect, Marvin O'Brien Pierre, has not been captured. He allegedly gained access to the complex, although he did not live there.

"There was nothing to stop him, and he has been running away ever since," said Joan Sauceda, who raised Appiah. "That man took Kofi's life and was able to flee with no consequences."

After launching two overtime programs to increase patrol in high-crime areas last year, Hurtt on March 15 announced the reassignment of 20 officers to the Fondren division.

The division still needs more than 10 officers to bring it up to the city's average for officers per resident, noted City Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck, who worked to secure the additional officers.

HPD also restarted a program known as Blue Star that offers security training to apartment managers. The program, first launched by former Police Chief C.O. Bradford, was suspended because of cutbacks until this year.

"We are thankful for the efforts," Myers said. "But the question is, 'Why didn't it happen earlier?' Especially with (Hurricane) Katrina."


The evacuee effect

The September arrival of tens of thousands of evacuees, and their settlement into vacant apartments in southwest Houston, amplified tensions and violence in the high-crime complexes.

The largest concentration of evacuees — some 5,991 people, according to city housing voucher records — landed in ZIP code 77036. The area is at the heart of the Fondren division, which recorded 12 homicides in the first six months of 2005, most in the city. Ten more homicides were recorded there in the second half of the year.

After their arrival, evacuees were suspected in the deaths of eight fellow New Orleanians. They were the victims of unknown or non-evacuee suspects in six killings and they are suspected in the killings of four people who were not evacuees.

Police attributed a significant portion of the violence to rivalries between groups from different public housing projects in New Orleans and also found that several killings occurred during robberies.

"We saw a rise in incidents around the time that people were receiving FEMA money," homicide Sgt. Brian Harris said. "Among the evacuees are a group of very dangerous people who have been in and out of the Louisiana justice system and who now are our problem. We are sending the message that you do go to jail in Houston and stay in jail."

Three of the five homicides recorded last year in Pasadena, Harris County's second-largest city, involved Katrina evacuees. Two were killed during an apparent robbery while others are suspects in the slaying of a Pasadena woman who police said had befriended them.

"It's hard to say where our homicide rate went last year," said Pasadena Police Department spokesman Vance Mitchell. "Without the Katrina factor it would have been down."

The Harris County Sheriff's Department has reported no killings involving evacuees and recorded a 10 percent increase in homicides in 2005, when it investigated 67 killings.

Another factor driving the homicide increase in Houston was gang violence, which began its spike in the first quarter of 2005, when homicide investigators tallied 13 homicides, compared with four in the first quarter of the previous year.


Increase in gang activity
The numbers represent an increase in activity by gangs concentrated in southwest Houston. By year's end, police considered 47 homicides to be gang-related — they occurred primarily in apartment complexes.

In 2004, HPD identified 29 homicides as gang-related, while 21 were counted in 2003, according to Dale Brown, HPD's homicide captain.

"Some of those numbers are low because we have not historically asked the gang question," Brown said. "But even so, it was apparent in 2005 that these groups of people were becoming increasingly violent."

Through March 21 this year, HPD had investigated eight homicides that appear to be gang related.

Police have identified MS-13 and La Tercera Crips, both of which have been the targets of large-scale investigations, as major contributors to the rise in gang violence. But other organizations, such as Southwest Cholos and La Primera, also have played a role, police said.

Hurtt and Brown responded in December by creating the homicide gang squad, a group of officers within HPD's homicide division who focus on tracking and linking gang violence.

At the same time, though, HPD's homicide and other investigative divisions have been hard hit by retirements. Homicide has lost 18 detectives in the past two years.

"When your investigative divisions are as thin as your street ranks, or more, then your ability to spot and react to trends is diminished," Garcia said.

Arguments were by far the leading cause of Houston homicides last year, and the trend continues this year. While some arguments stemmed from gang clashes or drug turf wars, a notable number were prompted by arguments that could be considered petty — a trend that police departments across the country also have cited.

In January, a man was beaten to death with a tire iron after he threw a beer can at someone in the parking lot of a southwest Houston apartment complex. In April, two people were shot to death during an argument about an overturned bicycle at a northside burger stand. In July, a bar manager was slain when he could not pay the promised $125 reward for the return of his lost cell phone.

"People seem to be resorting to violence in increasing numbers to solve some of their disputes," Brown said. "The idea that disputes could not be resolved in another manner is occurring at a higher rate over previous years and it's continuing this year."

Sauceda, whose stepson was fatally shot, possibly over a girl, feels the nature of violence in Houston has changed during her 30 years here.

"How can you kill someone over something so small?" she asked. "When people are willing to kill over such things, of course there is going to be terrible violence."

roma.khanna@chron.com

 

examples? thanks in advance

don't write checks your azz can't cash

 

Inflation has been kept under control and real wages are higher than they EVER were during the entire decade of the 90s.

http://www.laborresearch.org/charts.php?id=8

The economy is doing great - unemployment is at very healthy levels and GDP growth is excellent.

 

So the real hourly wages over the 4 year time period examined are down by a whopping 5 cents. Wow, indeed we are in true economic turmoil. How will we ever survive?!???? Your silly data fails to account for the huge wage increases of the late 90s boom, and conveniently starts its time frame from when we were just starting to crash down from the internet bubble. Niiiice. Selective data manipulation, anybody?

You liberals are so full of made-up excuses that it causes me to laugh.