John Whitmire promised a better Houston, his definition of better Houston, and I imagine most people’s definition is not more violent crime and wasted time by police officers.
Houston saw an uptick in violent crime in 2024 and years of delayed response times, now at its slowest since the 1990s. Officers are also now being asked to call federal immigration authorities anytime they encounter someone whose name was recently added to a national database for an outstanding ICE administrative warrant, which are signed by an ICE official or immigration judge to detain someone who has violated immigration law.
The slowest response time since 1990, it is so slow that they often don’t show up, so it doesn’t count toward the response time, as one officer told me years ago when I called a carjacking in progress. The officers arrived about an hour after the call was made.
He stated that we didn’t hurry because we knew he would be gone before we arrived.
There was a time when a man was hitting a woman in front of my house, and I called 911. They never arrived.
The same thing happened when I saw a man being beaten by four men; they never arrived. Heck, no one would answer the 911 call.
Too much better, and we may soon become the most dangerous city in the country.