Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt says Hurricane Katrina evacuees account for the increase in killings in his city.
The homicide rate rose 23 percent last year, and the largest increase occurred at the end of year. Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast in early September, and homeless evacuees were scattered across the country. A large number ended up in Texas.
According to the Houston Chronicle, the increase continues into 2006.
HPD will begin tracking whether Katrina evacuees are the victims or suspects in all crime categories, Hurtt said. That decision is partly to help secure federal funds to pay for two overtime initiatives launched last year to target hotspots for criminal activity, particularly in the Southwest, he said…
Hurtt did not specify how many of the 23 cases are known to have involved Katrina evacuees as suspects and how many as victims, but a Chronicle review of homicides in HPD’s district 17 shows that both the victims and suspects were from Louisiana in the three evacuee homicides in that area.
I don’t feel like doing any research on this, so I’ll keep the editorializing to a minimum. (It’s Friday.) In the meantime, some NO evacuees are trying to make lives for themselves in Houston, but thugs in the ‘hood won’t let them. Blacks preying on each other. It’s the law of nature, I guess, for every race.
All power to the people!
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I can’t speak to the situation in Houston, but here in the Dallas area there appears to have been at least a brief increase in criminal activity immediately following the relocation of some of the NOLA evacuees…
And I am a Louisiana native, I have a lot of family and friends in Louisiana, in the New Iberia and Lafayette area and several of them are law enforcement folks and according to them there has been a marked increase in crimes, especially in New Iberia, a *smallish* town that’s not use to a lot of crime in the 1st place…
Like you, I can’t verify the *figures* but I know what I’ve been told… Just not going to rip off any opinions I can’t back up…
When that many people land all at once in a metropolitan area, they are going to immediately swamp the infrastructure in finding housing, work and personal attention.
The Houston Chronical article said they gravitated toward the worst neighborhoods. I doubt it was anything like the magnetism implied in the choice of the word “gravitated.”
The largest supply of affordable and available housing is almost always in the troubled areas where other people are struggling to leave.
Not that all of the N.O. evacuees are saints and all the people in their new neighborhoods are thugs, but the dynamics at play in a situation like this are enormous.
The homicide rate in Houston has actually increased by 50%. 23% of the victims or perpetrators have been NO evacuees.
Atleast, thats what they said on the local news here in Houston.
The people aren’t going to be changed just by moving. The ghetto mentality is still there.
I’ve read about that, too, La Shawn. There have been many fights between N.O. and Houston teenagers in Houston schools, too. I guess I’ve heard of about four or five different rumbles through the local news. It’s very sad.
La Shawn:
Shreveport Bossier has also had an increase in crime from New Orleans evacuees.
In truth, the evacuees from the other areas of the Gulf Coast have NOT behaved in this manner. New Orleans, unfortunately, was a city paralyzed by antisocial behavoir.
But who can be surprised that evacuees were placed in the worst possible apartments? This is strictly economics. And FEMA is part of the problem, not allowing people to pay extra for a safer place.
I lived in Houston 1982-87. I drove through these endless apartment developments. Construction was shoddy, and I knew then that they would soon be slums.
So Alan Turner’s observations are not surpsising.
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