Posted on 02/06/2006 12:15:50 PM PST by SonofLiberty1
After Welcoming Evacuees, Houston Handles Spike in Crime Population Swell Fills Apartments and Strains Police Force
By Sylvia Moreno Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 6, 2006; Page A03
HOUSTON -- The southwest corner of this city is one sprawling low-rise apartment complex after the next, a once-hot real estate area that died with the 1980s oil bust only to be reborn in the '90s as a low-income, high-crime neighborhood. Now it's Katrina turf.
New Tony's Express, a neighborhood convenience store, is sold out of T-shirts and caps stenciled with the numbers 504, 985 and 337 -- the area codes for New Orleans and southern Louisiana. The emergency room of West Houston Medical Center is so busy treating Hurricane Katrina evacuees the staff jokingly calls itself "Charity West," a reference to New Orleans's venerable Charity Hospital.
And now, police say that southwest Houston, long recognized as a problem area, is facing another manifestation of the Louisiana exodus: Katrina crime.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The biggest strain is that there is a limited supply of turf to be controlled by gangs.
The new fellas from NOLA are just trying to carve out a chunk of the local economy for themselves ... and the natives are resisting their attempts.
Of the just over 1000 people exicuted in this country since capital punishment became legal again Tx had put down just over 350. Harris county, the county where Houston is can and proudly does claim the lion share of those convictions. Thus making Harris county the last place you want to mess with TX.
Gee, we never saw that coming. Huge numbers of people without any sense of right or wrong, having never worked a day in many of thjeir lives, who preyed on each other and surrounding people, then dropped into slightly more affluent areas where they expect everything to be handed to them - when it is not, they steal, deal, and "keep it real."
"Katrina crime."
There is almost no usable information in this article. Why are those people from New Orleans so violent? What makes southwest Houston so violent, I think I know because I used to live there.It would be nice if our major new outlets, reported the news as though they were speaking to adults.
I found this quote humorous!
"We should not be penalized for opening up our city to folks who lost their homes," Hurtt said in an interview last week. "We are just trying to help them get back to normal as soon as possible."
They are getting back to normal! Immediately
If they don't generate enough revenue to pay for the additional services needed, then they are fools to keeps them.
Good point. "Normal" is the problem.
Years ago Houston's administration drove the drug dealers out of the part of town where they had been plying their trade. They took a lot of credit for cleaning up part of the city. What they didn't admit is that many of those that were driven from one part of town ended up in the southwest part of the city because enforcement there was lacking.
Any current cleaning up of the city will result in a similar mess along with a lot of photo ops for those claiming credit for doing something. Houston will always be a major crime city unless they get enough officers to patrol the city. If you want police protection in Houston you had better live in an area that can afford to hire their own police patrols.
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It would be nice if our major new outlets, reported the news as though they were speaking to adults.
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For the most part, they are not. Old media is libs preaching to libs.
The contortions Mayor White and Chief Hurtt are going through to resist putting the blame where it belongs would be amusing if it wasn't so such a serious problem.
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