Crime rate drops in Houston with increased arrests

Houston Chronicle:

The city's overall crime rate fell more than 5 percent last year compared with 2005, despite a well-publicized spike in homicides, police statistics released Wednesday show.

Houston police made nearly 20 percent more arrests in 2006, a key factor that likely led to the crime reduction, Mayor Bill White said.

White credited the improvements to stepped-up enforcement in crime "hot spots," a push fueled by police overtime and some federal funding.

That expensive effort could be reduced if the favorable crime trends continue, the mayor said.

"What we've done has worked," White said after the City Council's weekly meeting. "The vast majority of folks are law abiding. A lot of the crime was gang-related, with career criminals or repetitive criminals. You take them off the streets, the crime goes down."

Police Chief Harold Hurtt told the council that the city recorded declines in the rates of rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft and auto theft.

Overall, the crime rate per 100,000 residents was down 5.7 percent. The homicide rate, however, increased about 5 percent.

The homicide rate was the only crime tracked by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program that increased in Houston in 2006. Homicides totaled 336 in 2005 and 376 last year.

"The increase that we saw last year was unacceptable," Hurtt said.

But he told the council his detectives did a good job solving last year's homicides, clearing 70 percent of the cases, compared with 58 percent the previous year. The national average for homicide clearance was 62 percent in 2005.

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Reporters in Houston seem to understand the correlation between arrest and crime drop that seems to escape some reporters from the NY Times. Perhaps many of the New Orleans felons who fled to Houston have either returned home or are now residing in Texas Department of Corrections facilities in Huntsville.