2009 Crime Statistics:
Burglary Epidemic Resumes

In 2008, after several years of generally rising crime rates, we saw significant reductions in most crime categories. However, the 2009 report we recently obtained shows that improvement has reversed. Crime was up in almost all categories.

Perhaps most troubling is our impotence to do anything to control burglaries. In 2009, Houston set a new all-time record with 29,279 burglaries reported. The burglary rate (i.e. the number of burglaries reported per 100,000 population) which had dropped significantly last year to 1,253 increased to 1,308 in 2009. Well over 90% of burglaries continue to go unsolved.

One bright spot in the new numbers is that the clearance rates (the percentage of reported crimes for which a person is arrested and charged) for nearly every serious crime saw continued improvement. The clearance rate for violent crimes was particularly impressive increasing by 4% from 34% to 38%. This came on top of a 9% increase in 2008, thus raising the clearance rate for violent crimes from 25% to 38% in just two years, a significant improvement.



Violent Crimes

There were 25,614 violent crimes reported in 2009, also an all-time record. Murder and aggravated assault were about flat, but robbery showed a significant uptick similar to burglary. Because of a significant increase in the City's population estimate, the violent crime rate declined slightly from 1,153 to 1,141.


A troubling trend has developed in the last two years with respect to rapes. After about a decade of about 800-900 rapes being reported each year, the number dropped significantly in 2007 to under 700. However, 750 rapes were reported last year and this year the number topped 800 again. This trend makes even more urgent a resolution of the thousands of unprocessed rape kits in storage at HPD.

Property Crimes

Reports of thefts jumped by 12% to just over 77,000 (another all-time record). The theft rate also increased from 3,190 to 3,432. However, auto thefts once again declined, this year from 15,200 to 14,500. This is a continuation of a long term decline since auto thefts topped out in 2001 at over 24,000. It would be interesting to conduct a detailed study of this phenomenon to see if there are strategies or tactics that caused this decline and that could be applied to other categories.

Clearance Rates

Many observers judge a law enforcement agency by the number of crimes committed in that jurisdiction. But the overall crime rate is caused by many factors, most of which are outside the control of law enforcement. The better measure in my view is the rate at which the law enforcement agency solves crimes, both in terms of the absolute number of crimes solved and the percentage of solved cases vs. reports, commonly known as the clearance rate.

Judged by this yardstick, HPD continued the improvement we saw last year. The clearance rate for most serious crimes ticked up by 1-2%. Overall, HPD solved 23,875 serious crimes last year, also an all-time record. Even in the burglary category, HPD solved over 2,300 cases compared to just fewer than 1,900 last year. The cost of solving a serious crime (determined by dividing the HPD total budget by the number of serious crimes solved) dropped from over $30,000 in 2008 to slightly less $28,000 in 2009. This is the first decline in this cost indicator for as long as we have records.

Perspective

In 2009 a Houstonian became the victim of a serious crime every four minutes, over 150,000 in total. That is about one in fifteen residents. When you add the victims' families and close friends, almost no one is left untouched.

What is probably most troubling about the upturn in criminal activity in Houston during 2009 is that crime was apparently falling in most of the rest of the nation. Final numbers have not been released, but primarily results suggest that crime rates across the country will continue the decline that has been in place for several years. The fact that Houston is headed the other direction is a clear call for action.

But that action must not be guided by the tired old cliché of "putting more boots on the ground." While it is clear that more resources are needed, especially in investigation and technology, simply throwing more money at HPD, without clear expectations as to outcomes and a system for holding HPD accountable for those outcomes, will be a waste of taxpayer money. Over the last six years we have increased the HPD budget by over $200 million, a 48% increase. The year-over-year increase has averaged about 7%, a little more than double inflation for the same period. Yet we have fewer officers and only solved 3,700 more serious crimes than six years ago. Despite the cost improvement this year, that is a marginal cost of $59,000 per additional serious crime solved. That cost structure is unacceptable and unsustainable. We cannot just do more. We must be smarter about how we do more.

City of Houston: The Coming Financial Crisis


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Historic City Election
Houston's recent election got international headlines for electing the first lesbian mayor of a major U.S. city. I recently broke down the vote from the run-off into Houston's 88 super neighborhoods and compared the results to previous elections. The analysis reveals a number of startling, and in some ways disturbing, patterns which may in the long run have more significance than electing the first lesbian mayor.

Voter Apathy. How few Houstonians voted in the run-off election is stunning. Only about 160,000 of Houston's nearly one million registered voters showed up, a miserable 16% turn out. This is down by about 60,000 voters from the most recent contested mayoral run-off election in 2003 between Bill White and Orlando Sanchez. About 220,000 people voted in that election, a 23% turnout. The poor turnout is even starker when compared to the 2001 run-off election between Lee Brown and Orlando Sanchez when 321,000 voted, a 32% turnout. In that election, Brown got more votes than Parker and Locke combined and Sanchez only got a few hundred less than their combined total.

Voter participation in city elections has been gradually declining for the last three decades, but the leg down in this election is staggering. Parker received about 82,000 votes, about 8% of the registered voters and about 3.7% of the City's population. On-line records go back to 1971. Back to that date, the City has never elected a mayor with this few votes. Also, the percentage of citizens electing her was just over a third of the average since 1971.



Turnout was down pretty much across the board in the Houston's neighborhoods. As one might expect predominantly Republic boxes were down substantially more than the City average. For example, Kingwood and Briar Forest were both off 39% from the 2003 run-off compared to the citywide average of 29%. Normally anemic Hispanic turnout was almost non-existent. In Denver Harbor, a Hispanic neighborhood which normally produces 1,500-2,000 voters, only 509 people voted. Notwithstanding that the Hispanic population of the City is probably over 1 million; it appears that only 5,000-10,000 Hispanics voted in the run-off. The only areas that came close to their 2003 levels were neighborhoods with substantial GLBT populations; however, even the Neartown/Montrose super neighborhood vote was down by 8%.

Perhaps the most puzzling lack of interest in the run-off came from the African-American community. While stalwart African-American neighborhoods like Acres Homes, Sunnyside and the 5th Ward were only off 15-25% compared to the 2003 run-off; that race had been considered a low water mark for African-American turnout. African-American turnout in the 2003 run-off had already tumbled by 30-40% after Sylvester Turner was eliminated in the November general election. In a number of the predominantly African-American neighborhoods, turnout in the 2009 run-off was nearly 60% was below the 2001 run-off between Brown and Sanchez.

Post-Racial Houston? Not yet. Houston has long prided itself on its enlightened race relations. And after Obama swept the City in 2008, many proclaimed Houston's post-racial era. However, sadly, the single most reliable predictor of how a person voted in the 2009 mayoral run-off was race. Ironically, Parker, a liberal Democrat, got only a handful of minority votes as African Americans overwhelming voted for Locke and Hispanic took a pass on the election. Of Parker's 82,000 votes it is likely that she received less than 10,000 minority votes. Locke received a comparatively large white vote as about half the Republicans broke his way. It seems likely that these voters were the social conservatives that objected to the Parker's life style. But even so, probably only about 30% of Locke's vote was not African-American. It is somewhat ironic that it was social conservatives as opposed to white liberals that were more willing to cross the race line in casting their vote.

Can a Minority be Elected Mayor in Houston? When Lee Brown was elected in 1997, many pundits opined that with Houston's growing diversity, it had seen its last white mayor. However, the early reports of the demise of white candidates for mayor have obviously proved to be premature with the election of White and now Parker. The most fundamental reason for the re-ascendancy of white candidates has been the declining minority participation in city elections. While the City that is about 2/3 minority by population, minorities probably only cast about 35% of the votes in the 2009 run-off. And a majority of the second largest minority voting bloc, Hispanics, voted for the white candidate. The same is true of the 2003 run-off when African-American voters chose White over Sanchez.

The only scenario that seems likely to return a minority to the Mayor's office is if a minority can get into a run-off with a highly partisan Republican and turn the race into Democrat vs. Republican contest. That is, of course, precisely how Lee Brown got elected in 1997 and re-elected in 2001. However, it is becoming increasing difficult for a minority to reach the run-off. Before 2003, it was generally assumed that a credible African-American candidate was guaranteed a place in a run-off. But with the African-American vote declining faster than any other group that is clearly no longer the case as Turner failed to make the run-off in 2003 and Locke made into the run-off in 2009 only because white voters split their votes among three other candidates.

The prospects for a Hispanic mayoral seem particularly remote. Notwithstanding Hispanic rise in a whole array of social and business settings, for some reason, the rank and file Hispanic community in Houston is simply not motivated to vote especially in City elections. Without a reliable base, the task of putting together a run-off tally for a Hispanic candidate is particularly problematic.

Why Don't Voters Care about the City Elections? It is somewhat of a conundrum that voters care so little about the City elections. There is widespread media coverage of the City's activities and the services provided by the City more directly affect an average citizen's life than any other level of government. Many theories have been put forth, from the fact that most citizens are satisfied with the City services to term limits to the lack of quality candidates. None seem to provide a satisfactory explanation. However, we need to find one. It cannot be good for the City in the long run for only 8% of its registered voters and 3% of its citizens to be selecting our mayor.