Update: Four more gunshots tonight. That’s three shootings in four nights in the same general area. So far it’s been an hour since reporting the gunshots and no HPD response.
Update: It’s been two hours and forty-five minutes give or take, and it’s now 1:16 AM. I am giving up and going to bed.
A vocal minority is turning criminals into celebrities. Law enforcement was summoned to the Jacob Blake incident because he was violating a restraining order. They were attempting to arrest him on an open warrant for sexual assault where he stuck his finger in his victim, smelled it, and commented it smells like you’ve been with other men. (Page 2 of the embedded document) Professional sports teams are honoring this man and condemning law enforcement. This has a long history tracing back to Mike Brown. Remember, in the autopsy report it showed that Brown had a blood spatter inside the police cruiser with the wound at an upward angle, establishing his arm was inside the cruiser above the officer when he was shot – verifying the officer’s version of the events.
However, this piece isn’t to rehash the vocal minority celebrating criminals. This piece looks at the other side of the equation – the victims when law enforcement makes the decision to write off an area. In this case, it’s the edge of Sharpstown. The past two nights have seen two different shootings on the street where I live. Both have had posts on social media and establish what happens when law enforcement writes an area off.
This is the post regarding shooting one two nights ago. Notice the police activity in the back right. The back center and left is the condos where I live with my unit off screen to the left. Had I been in my driveway this would have been visible. Gunshots are a regular occurrence out here. We hear them on a monthly basis. Whoever posted this image is obviously unhappy with Houston Police Department. They didn’t even bother to investigate. What happened the next night?
Shooting two happened the next night. This shooting ended up with a fatality and media coverage. Notice Neighbor13. Is the neighbor correct? Who knows, we have no idea if the two shootings are related or not. However, we do know that HPD didn’t investigate a shooting on the same street the night before. We can’t connect the dots because of HPD writing off the area.
The incident described in shooting one and brushing off crime isn’t unusual. Twice I’ve been the victim of petty crime. Twice I’ve called HPD to come out and pointed to the surveillance camera that recorded the crime. Twice HPD hasn’t cared. They didn’t even bother to talk to the people who own the camera or try to obtain the video. Here’s the crime in one report:
Keying a car is petty criminal mischef. However, when you point to the surveillance camera that captured the act occurring and HPD doesn’t bother to investigate then it’s no wonder crime persists. Criminals know they can act with impunity. The featured picture of the defaced Trump sticker could easily acted upon by HPD. The incident occurred on the night of August 20-21, and the same surveillance camera pointed out to HPD twice before captured the event. However, with the history of HPD not caring why bother to seek law enforcement involvement? Criminals know HPD will not act. This doesn’t just hold true for petty criminal mischief. A vehicle robbery occurred in the same vicinity, and surveillance video exists. HPD can’t compare the video of the robbery to the shooting and criminal mischief videos if they don’t try to obtain all the videos.
The broken window theory of law enforcement takes criticism for penalizing the poor and homeless. The criticism has some merit, but it’s also hard to disagree with the results that come from the practice. It works. The question is how strike the correct balance. Too much broken windows enforcement and you break down trust between police and the population. Too little, and criminals know they are allowed to act with impunity. One answer is holding a broken windows mentality for violations that threaten the health and safety of the community. It’s not a big deal if someone jaywalks.
But what about parking in a fire lane? Individuals in the vicinity park in fire lanes on a regular basis. You send the city pictures, but nothing happens. In fact, HPD drives past them to take the call for the criminal mischief and doesn’t bother to address the violation. Demanding a minimum level of obedience to laws that are meant to protect health and safety isn’t an unreasonable expectation.
This is all evidence of HPD simply writing off the neighborhood. That’s the end result of what happens when there’s significant black lives matter sympathy, a soft on crime district attorney, and a crop of criminal judges who are pro criminal as evidenced by the ongoing bond to murder spree take power. However, that mentality also has negative consequences to law enforcement.
Neighbor13 appears unhappy with HPD, and understandably so. Anyone in the area should be displeased that a shooting isn’t investigated. Why call law enforcement when they obviously don’t care and aren’t going to even pretend to hide their disdain for the neighborhood? Just like minority communities don’t trust law enforcement a similar level of distrust is brewing with the run of the mill law abiding citizen in the neighborhood. When HPD doesn’t even pretend to care or do the bare minimum investigation to try and solve crime why should anyone in the neighborhood trust them? This simply raises barriers to effective policing and police-community relations.
In the end, everyone loses. The neighborhood already has lost because HPD has written them off. HPD will also lose, though, because if the neighborhoods don’t see any value in having them around there’s no reason to back the blue when they make requests or raise concerns. Elections have consequences. We are starting to see the deep dive societal consequences from the democrat control of the district attorney and criminal court judgeships.
Sharpstown, and Westwood, have been dangerous, crime ridden areas for well over 30 years. I remember back in the day, removing the hub caps from my car before going to the area and parking, hoping the thieves would see no hubcaps and figure I’ve got nothing left to steal.
The area has been bad because of the many apartment complexes in the area. Remember when Texas’ own Castro was the HUD Secretary under Obama and wanted to put low income housing in every suburb in the country? This was the goal, to Sharpstown the whole country, spreading the crime and fear everywhere.
Greg, your best bet is to cut your losses, sell your condo, and just move. That area isn’t going to gentrify any time soon.
Greg, Criminal mischief, burglary of a motor vehicle and a host of other property crimes were made misdemeanors several years ago. This was done to lower the prison population. These crimes do not rate the same attention any longer. HPD was correct. IMHO that area of Houston is unsafe.. I’m surprised a unit was dispatched. They sometimes take the report over the phone and give out a offense number for your insurance. You may want to contact the local Constable and ask them for assistance. They have their own patrol, dispatch and investigators. Being elected, Constables may be more responsive. Good Luck.
I think it’s more a matter of HPD being lazy and not wanting to have to deal with investigations. When we lived in Midtown, I would write letters to the Captain for the area to get action on things like trucks parked for 14 days without moving, male prostitutes, etc. I had a different HPD Captain shrug and walk away after a neighbor was robbed on the sidewalk in front of her house, and HPD never showed up. The constable came by pretty quickly, though.
Where I live now, we have the opposite problem. People will call HPD because there’s a Black man walking down the sidewalk, claiming “he’s casing the houses”. In reality, he’s a neighbor, or just walking through the neighborhood to get to where he lives. The folks who do that also complain that “I pay a lot of taxes, they should listen to me”.
HPD officers are not going to go out of their way to write tickets for fire lane violations in plain sight, because they see no benefit to doing so. This has been going on far longer than the recent bail reform. I’ve had them tell me that they either don’t have ticket books, or are not sure that there’s a ticketable offense. Like I said, lazy.
You appear correct Ross. Four more gunshots tonight. Apparently something is going on if there’s three shootings in four nights in the same area. It’s been an hour since I reported the gunshots and no HPD response.
I grew up in Braeburn Glen and Sharpstown. My kids played baseball in the parks and at Bellaire. After my kids got out of college we bailed out of Meyerland and moved back to a nice spread across Bissonnet from Sharpstown.
We had a beautiful house on a lot that was well over an acre and a very nice tree lined street with great neighbors.
Between 2007 to 2019 I had a front row seat to the decimation of the area. It dawned on me that it would never get better because the city had bankrupted itself. I no longer wanted to live where I grew up. This article explains why I left Houston.
I don’t think Houston cops are lazy and I really do not believe they don’t care. I think the cops feel they are wasting their time when our uber-liberal DA Kim Ogg won’t prosecute low-level crimes.
In addition, the police have become demoralized because of the ongoing war on cops. Houston cops are led by Chief Art Acevedo who hugs ‘fuck the cops’ protesters and takes a knee with them.
Greg, you should contact your city council member and Mayor Turner with your complaints. They’ll probably brush you off, but it’s worth a try.
Spot on, Howie. How could you be a cop and NOT be demoralized right now, especially at HPD? Remember the Democrat rally at City Hall? The 60,000 person. totally not a super spreader, event? There were a bunch of arrests after that, rioters throwing stuff at cops, etc. And what happened? Kim Ogg let them all go.
How are HPD cops supposed to feel? And considering SJW Sheriff Garcia is in charge of the HCSO, I doubt the morale there is any higher.
Greg D. just wants what we all want….safe streets, the ability to go out and not worry about getting mugged, or becoming collateral damage in a drive by shooting, and the right to not have his car damaged because he has the gall to have a political bumper sticker on it. Hopefully Houston and Harris County voters figure out that voting has consequences, and see what they have wrought with their votes last go round. We shall see.
The City Councilman and I have had several conversations about the matter and he is sincerely concerned. I suspect even Mayor Turner would be concerned about three shootings in 4 days and HPD not even bothering to come out and take a report. The optics of that being raised in a City Council meeting would require at least an expression of disapproval and concern from the Mayor.
I would disagree about HPD not being lazy. How hard is it to dispatch an officer to take a report of a shooting, even if no follow up investigation will take place? How hard is it to talk to the owner of a security camera that has recorded a crime? How hard is it to write a citation for parking in a fire lane when you are already in the common area driveway and have to pass the vehicle on the way in and out?
I understand the demoralized and agree Ogg and company are bad for everyone except criminals. However, what happens to HPD morale if people ask the questions above on a regular basis anytime HPD raises concerns? What happens when law abiding citizens start to show the same level of concern for HPD as HPD shows for us? If they lose political support from the people their situation becomes much worse.
All true. HPD has been known to target areas in the past for higher enforcement, a show of force, if you will. Even if they won’t view the tape of your car being damaged (it’s probably been erased over at this point, by the way), there isn’t any reason they can’t put more units in your area doing traffic stops, driving around, and making their presence known. Perhaps you need to get your neighbors and others to also complain about the apparent lawlessness in your area. Maybe talk to one of the local TV stations? The squeaky wheel gets greased, and Turner is politically astute enough to know that.
This op-ed seems like a bait & switch given the headline speaks of one thing while the bulk of the piece focuses on the cops but here’s a few things to consider.
The fire lane you speak of is not an officially designated fire lane as established by state law and city ordinance. As such, any parking ticket issued for it will be null & void. I Googled it for you and came up with this: https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/baytown-news/article/Fire-Call-Who-checks-fire-lane-violations-1555118.php
The “vehicle robbery” you speak of is not a robbery at all because inanimate objects like cars cannot be robbed, robberies occur when a person uses force or threat of force to take something from another person. You can thank the state legislature for decriminalizing thefts from cars and car burglaries or you can express your wrath at the district attorney’s offices of the last 10+ years for treating the crime so poorly but absent catching a thief in the act, the DA’s office has made it clear they can’t be bothered.
Which brings us to shootings, every policing agency in this region coming to the conclusion that unless a person is shot, they do not have the resources to address gunshots in the air or lacking a victim, certainly in a hellhole like SW Houston where guns are shot off for a wide variety of occasions, most of them festive in nature. If a person is shot, HPD will send people. According to a different account of the shooting mentioned where people were hurt, HPD sent out a bunch of people to investigate.
Neither HPD nor HCSO do more than have a squad car briefly drive in an area where shots were fired unless there are victims hit by bullets or nearly hit by them with substantial damage to a home or business. Neither police agency subscribes to the discredited broken windows theory according to their press releases of the past few years, and the city cops largely disbanded their quick response teams in favor of more in patrol that are expected to go from call to call with minimal investigation when a person is not directly harmed.
Ask HPD’s public relations department how many calls they get for shots fired each year and divide that by the number of cops they have patrolling the streets. Do likewise for HCSO and then ask them both how many cars are burgled per year, the county had a program to take fingerprints & DNA swabs but dropped it for fiscal concerns as well as the reluctance of the DA, one of the Anderson duo if I recall correctly, because a solid case couldn’t be made. So no, they did not write off your neighborhood, they have been tasked with doing more with less resources all while the rest of the system has told us all to go fly a kite and get better insurance. Lest this be laid exclusively at the feet of the current district attorney or democrat judges, I’m sad to say that the decline began long before those clowns were in charge, the same for the former RINO’s populating county commissioner’s court.
Last thing, Turner is term limited and if he even bothers to run for another office such as commissioner’s court or state senate, he’ll likely win based on his popularity from his area of residence and the D beside his name. A third of city council is aggressively trying to decimate HPD and add more restrictions to prevent them from doing any good other than feel good measures. Even the best and brightest council members know they have little power in Houston’s form of government, the best of them having primary residences outside the city limits, so they mark their time to run for higher office. If you think joining the defund efforts will get you better services, more power to you but there are reasons why so many productive citizens have left your area and the city as a whole, but it’s worse out here in the county so plan to move a great deal further than you might expect, at least 2 or 3 counties away from here.
Both Greg and PeterD mentioned the Broken Windows concept, with the latter calling it “discredited.” To the contrary, Broken Windows – arresting and prosecuting people for life-style offenses because the offenders were likely to go on to commit felonies – was a highly effective crime fighting tool as was ‘Stop and Frisk.’ Both programs were scrapped because they impacted minorities disproportionately. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Of course those programs affected minorities disproportionately because minorities commit a disproportionate amount of crime.
And racial profiling is also an effective tool if used prudently. Stopping a black person wandering or driving around in the middle of the night in an affluent white neighborhood makes good sense. The same for a white person in a black neighborhood. The black person could very well be a burglar and the white person was probably looking to score some dope.
It is politically correct to condemn every effective police crime-fighting tool as racist because it will affect minorities disproportionately.
Howie, you are completely and utterly full of crap. There is no evidence whatsoever that broken windows policing is effective. None. It’s a figment of your cop imagination, seeing what you want to see. NYC ended broken windows policing and crime went down.
Stop and frisk is even worse than broken windows. In 2011, NYC had 675,000 stop and frisks. About 10 percent of them found pot, an illegal knife, a gun, etc. The other 90 percent of the victims of over zealous policing, nearly all of them black or brown, had done nothing to justify being put on the ground or up against the wall. Stop and frisk wasn’t some pleasant “please sir, lean against the wall, so I can gently check you for contraband”, it was more like “Get the fuck against the wall now, asshole, before I beat you senseless”, or being slammed to the ground by a couple jerks in blue. How would you feel, having to deal with that a couple of times a week, having done nothing wrong?
Sorry Ross, but you’re the one that’s full of crap. In NYC, Broken Windows worked as intended. Of course the crime stats went down when Broken Windows ended. That is because the cops then stopped arresting life-style offenders.
And while Stop-and Frisk resulted in only a few of those stopped having weapons, it still took a lot of guns off the streets. The procedure was slammed because it was applied mostly in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Then Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the practice because of the high crime rate in minority neighborhoods.
Stop-and-Frisk was not stopped until 2014 when ubrt-left Bill de Blasio became mayor of NYC.
And your description of Stop-and-Frisk as“Get the fuck against the wall now, asshole, before I beat you senseless” is absolutely absurd. While there may have bee tiny fraction of cops doing that, the overwhelming majority of cops never conducted stop-and-frisk that way. Of course, by watching TV cop shows, one would get a picture like that of how cops do their work.
Howie, I am shocked that someone of your background would endorse tactics that look and feel just like the ones the Gestapo and SD used in pre-1945 Germany to control minority populations. The criteria for stop and frisk were utterly ambiguous, things like “furtive movements”, “kept looking around”, “looked suspicious”, or “walking down the street laughing and joking”
You didn’t answer the question “how would you feel if you were stopped and frisked regularly?”.
There were minority males as young as 13 who were stopped on their way to or from school, including directly after walking out of school. Yes, those 13 year olds are always suspicious, aren’t they? Stop and frisk had a measurable impact on school performance in NYC.
Stop and frisk statistics show that firearms were found at a rate of 14 in 10,000 stops. That’s a really bad ratio that in no way justifies the exercise.
Stop and frisk was declared unconstitutional by the courts, so there wasn’t much choice in stopping it.
You need to quit looking at this from a cop perspective, and look at it from a harassed citizen point of view
Howie, when formally studied using all the controls and peer review process expected, the Broken Windows theory did not hold up. I’m sure that some have convinced themselves that it was wonderful and had no negative consequences all while producing great results after the massive ongoing propaganda campaign it was given but the reality is that it fell short. Some components failed due to poor and selective enforcement while others never panned out but as a whole it was debunked.
Stop and frisk was a great tool for police to do as they pleased without regard for the general conventions of personal liberties but ultimately it was supported only by those who were far, far less likely to be accosted solely because of race or economic status. Even before it was declared unconstitutional, which should throw all the “effectiveness” arguments out the window, it was proven that officers were focusing on minorities without any logical reason to detain them. Wonder of wonders when a small percentage of those stopped had a weapon or drugs on them, imagine what results they’d have locally, but the numbers proved how poorly the program was applied since whites were twice as likely to have weapons and 3 times as likely to have drugs yet who did the officers focus their efforts towards? When police try to make a self fulfilling prophecy instead of follow the law of the land, they lose those tools to oppress with. And the rate of finding weapons was even lower than Ross comments, because a great many times, stops were not being documented unless something was found, further skewing official statistics.
Racial profiling is another area where I’m not sure if you are kidding or not but it amounts to sloppy or lazy police work. Race, by itself, is a poor indicator of criminal activity. Race can be an individual component of profiling but race alone has been proven flawed time and again, the totality of circumstances far more effective even if it requires a little more thought. Under your scenario, a white person should expect to be stopped if visiting a friend in a largely black community regardless if he has done anything wrong, the same for the black fellow visiting a white friend, even if both communities were exclusive to a single race-a rarity these days. Now if your scenario had a car circling around a known crack house in the middle of the night when no other traffic was present and many arrests for drugs had taken place there, the race could add to the probable cause but lazy cops often skip those pesky details since they know they will catch someone eventually using such sloppy methods. And I wonder how Greg would appreciate it if he were constantly stopped by police, treated like so many stop & frisk recipients have been, and searched for no other reason than his area has very few whites. He seems like a great guy but after enough times, he might get fed up too.
So if the discussion is going to revolve around effectiveness, as in does the program work as intended, I suppose if you cast a broad enough net you will always find something eventually but does that always make sense when the rate of finding something is so low? I don’t believe it is a good way to spend manpower given the data. Given the number of criminal mischief reports made and the lack of prosecutable evidence, camera footage almost never enough, I don’t think wasting dozens of hours investigating when there are too few officers and too many higher level crimes in need of those hours.
Thanks for the input Peter. I would note that the fire lane is actually an enforceable fire lane. The fire department has already come out earlier this year and ordered changes based on failure to follow code. Though you may have a good point in that it’s the fire marshal rather than HPD that needs to come out and cite.
The article is criticizing the police, but that’s because they are understandably demoralized based on the DA and criminal court judges. I can’t blame them for being demoralized. However, it’s also a problem.
Howie, I agree broken windows is effective.
I also took your advice and called the mayor’s office. Both the mayor’s office and Councilman Pollard’s office had extensive conversations, and they came out this morning to address the concerns issued. Since there’s now an active investigation into what’s been ongoing I can’t say more as to what happened.
Broken Windows worked and worked well. It takes both financial and administrative support to allow it to work Once either of those goes away, you have zilch.
Spot on. The lack of support, if not outright hostility, by the DA and judges is how situations like this arrive.