HOUSTON – Violent crime in Houston is on the rise. City leaders said there are a few contributing factors.
The family of a 19-year-old woman has been grieving after the victim was caught in gunfire Saturday at a northwest Houston apartment complex.
On Friday, a 17-year-old teen fatally shot in a front yard on the city’s southside.
Homicide detectives with the Houston Police Department spent Monday morning investigating how a woman’s body made it to a dump site on Albert Street. The woman was found without shoes.
Houston has had 112 homicides since the start of the year, according to the Houston Police Department. There were 81 in 2020 during the same time period. Councilman Greg Travis, who represents District G, said the pandemic is one of several contributing factors to the rise in crime.
“If you look at 2020, it was not a great year for us either, and 2019 was just a little bit better,” he said. “So, this is not something new. It’s been coming on and it’s getting progressively worse, and we gotta do something about it.”
Travis said HPD is understaffed for a city its size, with about 5,400 officers. He said the city would benefit from an additional 1,000 officers.
“Even if you put a thousand more out there, I don’t think you’re going to see a huge reduction in crime until we start putting these bad characters behind bars and keeping them there until their trial,” he said.
Travis said the other issue is the county’s bail reform.
“We are letting the same people out over and over and over again. If you have 112 homicides, you don’t have 112 murderers,” said Travis.
Councilman Edward Pollard, who represents District J, shared a similar sentiment.
“Criminals are being arrested, they’re taken to jail, and they’re right back in the street the next day. And so, that doesn’t give the community any confidence when they report a crime,” Pollard said. “It also lowers the morale of police officers who do their jobs to catch criminals, but then see them right back on the streets.”
Pollard said the city can do a better job at giving criminals an alternative to a life of crime. His district launched a community-led police patrol program in 2020 that partners with HPD to focus on lower-level “quality of life” crimes.
“We know that HPD is spread very thin, and so, they’re always going to prioritize high crimes first, so we don’t want that to neglect the lower-level quality of life crimes such as panhandling,” said the District J councilman.
Both city council members said they believe the city’s new police chief, Chief Troy Finner, can get crime to trend downward.
“But it won’t just be the police chief,” Travis said. “It will be the community as well to bind onto it and let not only the mayor know, but letting the county judge know, letting the judges know, and letting the DA know that this is unacceptable.”
Travis added the change won’t happen overnight.