Has Crime Taken Refuge in Houston?

Since Katrina hit New Orleans in August, causing nearly its entire population to leave, only about one sixth of its residents have returned. Least likely to return are the poor, including much of the city's criminal element, many of whom ended up in Texas.

In Houston alone, there are as many as 131 known sex offenders and 132 people with outstanding arrest warrants, and police there have set up a dragnet to find and arrest any lawbreakers.

"We're going to be very actively pursuing these individuals in the very near future," said Lt. Robert Manzo, a spokesman for the Houston Police Department. "I would say within the next 24 hours."

Statewide, 373 registered sex offenders and 255 "wanted persons" sought federal assistance in Texas, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The DPS got the data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency this week, weeks after Gov. Rick Perry asked for it, and has begun distributing the names to law enforcement agencies. It is unknown how many of them are still in the state.

This comes as no surprise to me.

Since nothing is being done about the looters [in New Orleans], I can't help but wonder how many of them will end up being imported, by the busload, into Houston -- if they ever quit threatening their rescuers.

In fact, a local minister of the Nation of Islam seemed to agree around that time, saying of Houston's large refugee population that, "[T]he ward wars that take place in New Orleans have now moved to Houston." I'm not sure that the "ward wars" have moved to a new arena, but it looks like plenty of other criminal activity might have.

While New Orleans has seen its crime rate plummet (Its first post-Katrina murder took place in November.), Houston has just reported a 24% increase in its murder rate.

[Houston Police Chief Harold] Hurtt said many of the killings have resulted from violent disturbances turning deadly, most of them in and around Houston apartment complexes.

"It's an unfortunate fact that a majority of homicides occur in apartment complexes," said homicide Capt. Dale Brown. "Has it always been that way? The answer is probably no. But that's the case now, and it's something we have to deal with."

Brown would not comment on what impact the influx of Katrina evacuees -- many of whom swelled the populations of a number of low-income apartment complexes in September -- have had on the homicide spike. He did suggest, however, that any sudden increase in population is typically accompanied by a rise in crime.

While the refusal to comment on the origins of this increase could simply reflect lack of knowledge, it could also reflect political correctness. In any case, Houston, which recently had to stop taking additional refugees, has added about 100,000 apartment-dwelling refugees, many lured (even from other evacuation destinations) by vouchers for a free year of housing.

[Mayor Bill] White said the apartment occupancy rate in the Houston area is now 97.4 percent. Just 3,500 units at apartments that are participating in the city's voucher program remain available, and only about half of those are larger than one bedroom.

I have heard several fellow Houstonians complain of an increase in crime and suspicious activity in their neighborhoods since Katrina, and there was recently a large melee, involving arrests, between refugees and native Houstonians in a high school here. (300 of said school's total student body of 2500 hail from the Big Easy.) One reader sent me an email, which I excerpt here, that sounds ... suspicious.

At approximately 11:00 a.m. today, Wednesday, 11/30/05, the door at [redacted] was found kicked in and a crime in progress. The resident was not home, but the mailman while delivering the mail found the door open and the [burglars] in the process of trashing the house so he immediately ran to a neighbor's house where HPD was called.

The vehicle was a light blue (or maybe a bluegreen) [S]uburban with out of state plates. There were at least 4 culprits (two reported blacks and two Hispanics men with a possible fifth woman driving the get away vehicle). We have reports that this same house has had 2 previous burglaries this year; and note this is not the same house that was previously kicked in on [redacted] last month.

While the particular state on the plates was not specified, there are a ton of Louisiana plates on the roads here in H-Town these days. I have my guess for which state's plates were on the Suburban. And while kick-in burglaries were not unique to New Orleans before the storm, it is notable that this email describes the third such burglary since Katrina in a small subdivision that was relatively crime-free beforehand. It is also interesting that a rather notable (and similar-sounding) kick-in/ransack-style burglary also occurred recently in Baton Rouge, another magnet for the New Orleans diaspora.

Burglars kicked in a former NFL player's door and stole his rings from Super Bowls I and IV.

Frank Pitts, a Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver from 1965-71, is now a sergeant-at-arms for the Louisiana Senate.

...

[T]he rings had been in the second drawer of his bedroom dresser, which was dumped on his bed. Burglars also took a television set from the den, "trashed" another bedroom but passed on other football keepsakes in the living room, Pitts said.

While it is premature to claim that any of these kick-in burglaries has been committed by New Orleans refugees, it is true that Baton Rouge police have had their "hands full since Katrina", having already made 29,000 arrests this year as opposed to 25,000 last year. However, that same report claims that crime in that city is actually down, a contention echoed by the first story I linked to, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram .

It's still too early to say what effect on the crime rate, if any, the evacuations will have in Texas and elsewhere. According to published reports, Baton Rouge, despite taking in tens of thousands of evacuees, has seen its crime rate drop. New Orleans, meanwhile, which last year reported 265 murders, has been a portrait of calm.

So the jury's still out on the question of whether Houston has suffered an increase in crime due to its influx of hurricane refugees, but it doesn't look good.

-- CAV

PS: On this evening's news were two pertinent reports. First, the jump in Houston's murder rate again.

"In November and December of this year we had 51. Last year we had 30, and that's an increase of 70 percent over those last two months," Hurtt said.

Hurtt and other officials said there are several reasons the number of violent crimes has increased, but said they are most closely watching increased gang violence. Investigators have blamed the increase on family violence, drugs and violent crimes committed by gang members.

"The face of murder in Houston over the last year or so has changed somewhat," HPD Homicide Capt. Dale Brown said. "We are seeing more groups of individuals involved in violent crime."

...

HPD officials have been careful not to blame hurricane evacuees for any increase in crime the Houston area has experienced since September.

Hmmmm. A 70% increase since Katrina, and HPD sounds like its going out of the way to avoid stating what looks almost like a foregone conclusion.

Second, there was this unusual crime, which will be hard not to attribute to a Katrina victim.

A Katrina evacuee was charged Wednesday with leading deputies on a 35-minute chase through northwest Harris County, KPRC Local 2 reported.

...

Moore hit four patrol cars and a civilian's pickup truck during the chase, according to Harris County Sheriff's Department Lt. John Martin.

Officers said they found 1 to 2 pounds of marijuana, some cocaine and $1,400 in cash inside the Moore's car.

Something's fishy. They mentioned that he's a Katrina evacuee! There must be a catch.

Oh yeah.... How will hey manage to blame Bush for this?

I'm waiting for that "other shoe" to drop.

PPS: The Houston Chronicle follows up with a story that notes that while homicides are up, the overall crime rate is down. (But the yearly numbers seem to cover up some alarming trends.) The HPD, reluctant to finger Katrina evacuees as a cause, is nevertheless looking into that possibility.

In recent months, violent crimes appear to be on a dramatic rise, and police say, is undergoing some disturbing changes.

Fifty-one homicides were reported in November and December -- a 70 percent increase from the same period last year, Hurtt said.

Hurtt also said he has seen a "tremendous change" in how killers and victims are acquainted. Twenty to 25 years ago, most killings involved friends or family members, but that is no longer the case -- and it's making murders harder to solve, he said.

"One of the things that is making it so difficult for our homicide investigators is that a lot of these homicides are stranger on stranger," Hurtt said.

Recent killings most commonly start as disturbances that turn deadly, Hurtt said. Other motives include robbery, family violence, gang activity and narcotics.

Eight slayings have involved hurricane evacuees as suspects, victims or both, officials said.

"You're bringing people with different cultures, different backgrounds; they have different lifestyles there in New Orleans than we have in Houston," said Capt. Dale Brown of the homicide division. "The equilibrium was thrown out of whack, with people competing for jobs, competing for turf, or whatever it is."

This last 'graph sounds like pure multiculturalism to me.

The story gets more interesting:

Homegrown gang activity is not the only concern.

Hurtt said that after talking with state and regional officials, he is "pretty certain that (Louisiana) gang members did relocate here to Houston."

Capt. Brown said the department is still gathering intelligence on what role, if any, Louisiana gangs may have played in recent homicides.

"Is it possible and probable that there were gang members involved in some of those, I think the answer's yes," he said. "We're just not prepared to say it's a Louisiana problem at this time."

Hurtt said the department is "making headway" in gathering intelligence about Louisiana gang members in the city, despite difficulties obtaining information from a database of known gang members from Louisiana authorities, whose records were damaged by the hurricane.

From these two stories, Chief Hurtt sounds like he's trying to put a PC spin on this, while Captain Brown is simply being cautious.

It is worth noting that extrapolating from the 2004 murder rate per 100,000 people in New Orleans (56, over ten times the national average), we would expect about 9 extra murders for the 100,000 new apartment dwellers in Houston. While number crunching proves nothing, we seem already have almost the "right number" of "extra murders": eight.

In the meantime, our public schools here are bracing for an increased police presence.

The increased security efforts come after a dozen or so significant fights in HISD between Houston students and Hurricane Katrina evacuees, including one earlier this month at Westbury High School that resulted in 27 arrests. In September, five students were arrested after a fight at Jones High School.

Houston, we have a problem.

Updates

Today: (1) Cleaned up HTML. (2) Added PS.
12-22-05: Added PPS.