Student asks city to fight murders, shootings, other crime
We can now add a high-school student troubled about rampant crime in his southwest Houston neighborhood to the blogHOUSTON chorus wondering when Mayor White and his council plan to address the Houston Police Department's manpower issues.
Here's an excerpt from Rick Casey's column today:
IT was not a situation Lee High School student Donald Hanks could easily have imagined.
Standing at a microphone in the school library Thursday night in front of a crowd of 200, he was politely but firmly asking for specific commitments from two City Council members and enough police brass for several school bells.
[snip]
They wanted help cracking down on the crime that has left four students and former students dead and seven more shot, that has drug dealers patrolling the neighborhood, that has prostitution run out of "spas" and rent-by-the-hour motels.
They asked for and received promises of:
•A police storefront office in the area.
•The closing of one particularly bad nightclub and efforts to identify and close other problem clubs.
•A school zone to cut down on speeding traffic on Hillcroft. (High schools are not normally given school zones.)
•An effort to increase the number of 70-member cadet classes from two to four to begin to make up for the loss to retirement of 500 Houston police of all ranks in the past 18 months.
•Monthly meetings with the Lee group to plan and assess crime-fighting efforts.
•A commitment to conduct a study to determine the number and kinds of crimes being committed in the school's area.
Mayor White and his council enacted SAFEclear under the guise of public safety. They plan on installing red-light cameras under the guise of public safety. They have banned smoking under the guise of public safety.
Why won't they address HPD's worsening manpower difficulties, which are directly related to public safety?
UPDATE: KPRC-2 joins the chorus tonight as well, with a story entitled Police Shortage Affects HPD Response Times:
Last year, the Houston Police Department received more than 1.6 million 911 calls. Yet, the department is suffering through a critical manpower shortage. The shortage is now affecting how quickly officers are responding to some of the most urgent cries for help, the Local 2 Troubleshooters reported Sunday.
[snip]
[HPD Chief Harold] Hurtt said he knows his department is struggling to keep up in certain areas, but it's a problem that's not going to get better anytime soon.
"In the time since I've been here we've lost probably 500 officers. We're hiring them 70 at a time, so it's going to be a long time before we can catch up," Hurtt said.
Hans Marticiuc is the president of the Houston Police Officer's Union. He said it is not just the public, he's also hearing from officers who are worried about getting backup quickly.
"It's a concern and it ought to be a concern for the citizens," Marticiuc said. "I'm hoping our elected officials hear this stuff, see this information, and realize staffing over here has got to be the highest priority because it's a public safety issue."
It sounds as if KPRC shamed former HPD officer and current councilmember Adrian Garcia into promising to act on the manpower shortage. We'll have to keep watching to see if he follows through, or if he can interest Mayor White and the rest of council in this problem that this blog and KTRH-740's Chris Baker have been pounding on for a while.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 05/22/05 09:40 PM | Houston Politics | Print | Comments (1)
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