Coons recalled comparisons made decades ago of crime rates in Philadelphia and New York City, with considerably more crimes reported in New York. But researchers found minor crimes constituted a significant portion of the difference between the two cities — a sign that crime might not really be worse in New York, but rather people trusted police more there.
With Houston police now calling ICE agents on people with outstanding administrative warrants, some immigration advocates have said they worry it might make some residents more reticent to call police to report crime.
That could play a factor in 2025’s decline, Coons said. But it wouldn’t explain why calls for service were already on the decline in 2024, the last year of President Joe Biden’s presidency.
It’s not yet clear whether other cities are seeing the same decline in calls for service as Houston. But there’s some evidence a growing number of people say they are victims of crime, who haven’t reported those crimes to police.
The Houston Police Department’s statement made me crack a smile.
Marc Levin, chief policy counsel at the Council on Criminal Justice, said there is a lack of data on the Houston region specifically. But nationwide data on the widening gap between reported crimes and those who say they were a victim is likely playing out locally.
Police and researchers started to spot this growing trend in recent years, Levin said. The isolation of the early months of the COVID pandemic combined with the fallout from the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis shook some people’s trust in law enforcement, he said.
An administrator with the Houston Police Department said reporting crimes is important to ensure that victims get a proper investigation and that administrators get solid data to more fully understand crime patterns in the community.
“When you report a crime, it becomes a statistic,” said Caroletta Johnson, the commander of the department’s community affairs division. “And when we look at our statistics, we use those to make decisions on how to deploy our resources.”
I have a theory as to why people may have become more hesitant to report crimes in 2024. The Sexual Assault Scandal that was in the news in 2024, and now HPD is cooperating with ICE.
The following is why the use of ‘properly investigate’ made me smile: they managed to claim something they thoroughly failed at.
Between 2016 and 2024, Houston Police Department leaders had multiple opportunities to question — and potentially stop — the use of an internal case code that has rocked the agency.
Internal auditors found in 2016 that HPD’s division investigating sex crimes used the code — “suspended – lack of personnel” — on one-third of cases in the first six months of the year.
In 2017, the department’s newly appointed captain of the Special Victims Division discovered that their caseload included 1,600 unassigned child sexual assault cases.
And in 2018, then-executive assistant chief Troy Finner, who would later become police chief, found a routine case had been labeled suspended, ordered a commander to research the matter, then never followed up.
Despite at least seven chances to take action or investigate further, no high-ranking police officials halted the use of the code attached to about 264,000 incidents over the past decade, according to a new internal report released Wednesday by HPD and city leaders. HPD’s findings mark the latest disclosure in the scandal that has dogged the department for months and contributed to the May resignation of Finner.
A study indicates that fear of deportation affects the immigrant community.
Over the past 25 years, the Latino population in the United States has grown exponentially. The growth the Latino population and the increased anti-1immigration policies and enforcement strategies in recent years make it necessary to better understand Latinos’ fear of deportation and perceptions of law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Historically, police have struggled to develop relationships with communities that have been victims of racial discrimination (Culver, 2004; Davis & Hendricks, 2007). This relationship building has been further stifled by Latinos’ perception of police as both the protector and immigration officer, resulting in a greater fear of deportation in the Latino community (Arbona et al., 2010; Vollmer Hanna & Ortega, 2016). This perception of law enforcement is not surprising given the fact that law enforcement officers are increasingly tasked with carrying out immigration enforcement. But crime prevention and intervention efforts on the part of local police departments require positive relationships between law enforcement, the criminal system, and local communities (Davis, Erez, & Avitabile, 2001; Vidales, Day, & Powe, 2009). Crime prevention and intervention rely heavily on the collaboration of the crime victims and reports of community members (Kidd & Chayet, 1984). As such, it is necessary to develop a greater understanding into Latinos’ fear of deportation and how this fear impacts public safety, police-community relations, the reporting of crime (or lack thereof), and overall perspectives of Latinos toward the criminal justice system.