There are no winners because of Mayor Whitmire’s childish behavior.
Prostitution – The Bissonnet Corridor
Those funds allowed the Council Member Pollard, working with other agencies, to fix what had been a problem for decades; it was not a John Whitmire with his I ride alone, so I know. No more little boys are asking their moms why the woman is naked as they turn on the feeder of the Southwest Freeway. Thank you, Council Member Pollard.
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Mi Dos Centavos
I reside in District J and am very familiar with the District J Patrol. Our community did not use it much because we preferred using 311. Unfortunately, 311 is almost useless in most cases now. Broken water mains still seem to be a primary concern, as the city typically responds, although more slowly, to those calls, while other 311 calls are forgotten about. I quit calling after 311 would email me that the problem had been solved, even though it had not. Why waste my time?
Went to check the 311 map and found that we currently have 11 water leaks reported to the city. This is from a small neighborhood that has fewer than 400 homes.
We had one house where a burglary allegedly occurred; the house has been vacant for decades, and numerous burglaries have been reported at that location over the years. That is the only crime reported recently in our neighborhood.
Heavy trash has not been picked up for nearly six months; if it had not been for Council Member Pollard using District funds, six months of heavy trash would still be out there. Luckily, we only have about three months of heavy trash sitting out on the curbs.
A few years back, our community worked hard to get the NO PARKING ON YARD Ordinance. We do have a few people who like to park their vehicles on the grass in front of their homes. Like many older neighborhoods, we don’t have extensive deed restrictions, so we are limited to what we can do as a Civic Club. Up until Mayor Whitmire had a pissy fit, District J Patrol was the place we went to. All it would take is for an officer to come and tell the residents that parking in the yards was prohibited. Problem solved, but Whitmire, in his display of stupidity, decided that the Houston Police Department was no longer going to enforce the city ordinance.
It could be that the mayor doesn’t know the ordinance requires a police officer to go to the house, or maybe he doesn’t give a shit about what happens to smaller neighborhoods outside the Washington Avenue area.
If I were a betting man, I would say Whitmire doesn’t give a shit, especially when the neighborhood is majority brown skinned people.
The one thing that was lost is the communication that our neighborhood had with the police. We often had them at our civic club meetings. That trust that HPD is losing from the NON-Immigrant and Immigrant community is going to cost the city.
The Houston Article
Officials at the Houston Police Department have decided they will no longer accept a City Council member’s overtime funds for special patrols in his district after expressing concerns about being told what to do by the elected official’s office.
Council Member Edward Pollard has run a program called the District J Patrol using council district service funds since 2020. He calls it his signature program, and said it was designed to help get police officers out into the community and build trust in wake of George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis.
Through the initiative, residents submitted complaints about quality-of-life issues through an online portal, and officers who signed up to respond to the issues received council member-funded overtime to address them.
Pollard has put around $750,000 a year to fund overtime for officers to run the patrol, and purchased six $30,000 ATVs for officers to ride around on as they respond to low-level crimes in the district.
… Hardin said in the email that the “strict parameters” the council member’s office was enforcing for when they decided to pay officers for overtime was “inappropriate,” and that how overtime dollars were used were at the sole discretion of the captain.
I am sure that our Council Member could find a use that will help his constituents and not send it down that wasteful hole of the City’s bureaucracy.
