[Kirkwood]

"Sorry to hurt your feelings but a huge percentage coming out of NO are indeed thugs and criminals...."

Utter baloney (putting it politely). When you have 300 thousand displaced New Orleanians, you are bound to get reports of criminals up to no good. However, you owe an apology to the 299,000+ New Orleanians who are just trying to get their lives back on track. Since you failed to tell the whole story, let's not forget that crime in Houston pre-Katrina far exceeded anything that ever took place in New Orleans at any time.

[Rte66]

You mean just because our population in Houston is much larger than NOLA's was? I'm not so sure about the per capita's, though.

[VRWCTexan]

New Orleans (had) a murder rate that was 10 times that of the national average....coupled with a very corrupt city hall, and an even more corrupt police department.

IMHO, to blindly believe that it's just a tiny handful of bad actors spiking crime rates in every city that took in folks from N.O., is illogical and dangerous.

Just last night I visited with a family friend that has been engaged in Houston area law enforcement for 20+ years and he advises that the crime situation triggered by the influx of criminals is far worse that what is making it into the local papers...