by Jay Wall
There is a fourth certainty; Houston has become one of the ten most dangerous cities (per capita) in the United States, as reported by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR), for cities with a population over 500,000. In fact, Houston is the ninth most dangerous big city in the country.
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Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation 2015 Uniform Crime Report
Houston, we have a crime problem! So what are you going to do about it Mayor? The honeymoon is almost over.
In my opinion, in order to address our growing crime problem, our new Mayor should insist that HPD enter the late twentieth century regarding policing. It is time for a change in HPD’s dated policing philosophy.
In 2015, Houston had 303 murders, a spike of more than 60 over the 242 murders we had in 2014. For crying out loud, people are being murdered outside the Galleria! Car thefts and purse snatchings there are almost everyday occurrences. Crime is a problem for all of us.
How does HPD move the crime needle when the existing leadership, albeit under an interim chief, has no clue? First, we need to agree on the need to change our dated policing philosophy from the reactive “Professional” model of policing, whose primary metrics are response times to 911 calls and Requests for Service, to the proactive Compstat or Crime Control model, whose primary metric is the reduction of crime.
How does HPD then reduce crime? Good question! The new Mayor needs to bring in a team who understands how to implement the new system. It is a paradigm change. To use a football analogy, think of going from a Veer offense to a Spread offense. The best defense is a good offense that Houston needs new coaches to implement. Comparative, or Computer Statistics (Compstat) was the greatest organizational change in policing in the 20th century. Compstat was a new way of gathering and using information to fight crime.
How does Compstat work? Put simply, it uses information on criminal activity to outsmart criminals. Computerized pin mapping and other cutting-edge analysis techniques serve as a radar system, greatly simplifying the prompt identification of crime patterns. The Geographic Information System (GIS) component is key to pattern recognition; it enables the police to see where and when crime is occurring; either near bus routes or near parks, playgrounds, or schools. It can highlight banks, ATMs, convenience stores, or other targets to speed pattern recognition and improve response times by deploying resources in areas where they are most needed. Different information, such as the location of probationers or parolees, residences of those with outstanding warrants, homeless shelters, pawn shops, or known “chop shops” can also be overlaid.
Note that I stated earlier to “bring in a new team.” Our existing police leadership does not know what it does not know. In order to implement Compstat successfully, HPD will need to look to a leader with experience in utilizing analytics and holding people accountable. I realize that any decision by the new Mayor to go outside the department for a new chief will be met with derision, nevertheless, it is what needs to be done.
The right chief would assure that the need to go outside the department was never a necessity again. Furthermore, they could implement training and systems that would ensure officers held over understood how the system worked. HPD has a number of capable leaders; however, I would argue that none has the knowledge that would enable them to implement the change that HPD requires if this hidebound behemoth is to become the agile force that we must have to significantly reduce crime in our 630+ square mile city. It will take a significant commitment to execute this program; though in real dollar terms, this commitment will be minimal. The HPD Foundation or GHP should consider funding the implementation effort.
We desperately need to institute the technology and methodology that identifies and focuses resources on areas with high levels of criminal activity (HPD polices Houston the same way it did in 1979). The Compstat system has been used to reduce crime by 40{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} or more in dozens of cities where it has been deployed: New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Indianapolis, and San Diego, to name a few.
Any serious businessperson knows that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Measurement should be HPD’s bottom line; the best indicator of how the department is doing beat-by-beat, district-by-district, and citywide. One might assume that HPD already worked that way, with command staff watching crime trends with the same hawk-like attention that private corporation management staffs pay to profit and loss or cash flow. One might also assume that the police department of Houston, Texas, the fourth largest city in the US with a budget exceeding $700 million, would operate this way. One would be wrong.
Bottom line, it’s long past time to do what is right. Let’s fight crime Compstat-style and resist unreasonable union demands and replace an entrenched (engorged) HPD command staff more concerned with maintaining the status quo… their jobs (their pensions), than protecting the citizens of Houston.
Proactive policing is the best government program yet, devised to regenerate troubled neighborhoods and free their law-abiding residents from the thrall of fear and disorder. The murder rate in Houston has increased by more than 20{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} over the last year (Lives matter!). The clearance rate for burglaries is only at 6{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} (Property matters, especially if it’s yours!).
The use of Compstat can and will bring accountability to HPD. It would empower middle management and allow the cream of its managerial and front line forces to rise. Crime will plummet!
Empowering the stodgy, hopefully soon-to-be streamlined, command staff at HPD, forcing other city departments to work together, and ultimately altering disruptive public behavior will take hard work and intestinal fortitude (Read Guts). I hope our new Mayor will step up and meet the challenge. It’s long over due.
J.W.”Jay” Wall III is a Houston real estate broker, specializing in tenant representation with a longstanding interest in public safety.
With all due respect, I’m suspicious of a list of top crime cities that does not include either Chicago or New Orleans. Chicago had 488 murders in 2015 – twice the number that Houston had, and yet it’s not even on the list.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with your point that our police department needs fundamental changes, you also point out that measurement is the beginning of assessing success or failure. It’s hard to take your argument seriously when your own supporting data is suspect.
I don’t disagree with you, but what about measures that can be taken without importing new leadership?
You are 100{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} correct about the resistance bringing I’m new leadership would generate and such an expendature of political capital this early in the term could have a serious impact on the ability to achieve other goals.
The “broken windows” mentality in New York City showed significant success. Plus it would nicely tie in with getting the city Super Bowl ready.
Right now HPD knows where crime hot spots are. The problem seems to be a lack of will to address the known problems.
Funny, Alan Helfman was calling for HPD to use Compstat over ten years ago, some of his friends at the police union publicly demanding the program too. Alan went on to say that HPD needed thousands more officers to properly implement it successfully but this was when Mayor Bill White’s failed pension reforms resulted in many hundreds of officers leaving the department. He also had an outsider police chief, Harold Hurtt that claimed to have done Compstat one better because Houston was the second most dangerous city for murders per capita at the time.
Now, thanks to failed economic polices from the last few mayors, we have fewer cops and more citizens but no means to hire more public safety and an existing debt for the ones we have. I am loathe to trust union officials thanks to historical precedent and while I have long been told that Mr. Helfman is an honest car dealer, here we are listening to the same message by a commercial real estate developer. Am I being too skeptical?
I do not accept the need for more cops; I absolutely support a management style that deploys available assets where they will achieve maximum results. This should be self evident. Any scheme that simply states ‘we need xx cops per sq. mile, or xx cops per 1k residents’ is just self serving blather designed to increase the numbers of cop union dues payers.
Lane, I tended to think along those lines too except the study the city commissioned was detailed enough to show where specific divisions would get specific numbers of officers to address specific needs rather than blanket numbers for unknown use and the union had no input on how the study was conducted. I still think city spending should be reeled in before any tax increases are brought to the table but it did provide food for thought.