The best way to get the city to accomplish anything is to call the media, but you must first allow them to do nothing and wait, and wait, and maybe wait some more. Then you call Mighty Mouse, the news media, and with one phone call from them, Houston’s best will get on the job.
It is a shame that, especially under this mayor, things have deteriorated to the point where the only way to get the city to move forward, even on issues like solving a solvable crime, is to call the news media. Hardly a week goes by without the press getting involved to help move the city to do what it is supposed to do. I know that I would not call the police to report something stolen unless the insurance were involved; otherwise, it would just be added wasted time. A drive to the substation and a piece of paper on which I reported the incident. Those monthly crime reports may only be half of the crimes that are committed, because I would be surprised if others didn’t share my perspective.
The case of the stolen vehicle with a tracking device.
A Houston mother is pleading for help after thieves stole her family’s trailer and Can-Am side-by-side from right outside their southeast Houston home — a theft caught entirely on camera.
The crime happened around 4:40 a.m. Wednesday, when surveillance footage shows a white pickup truck backing into the Gutierrez family’s driveway. Moments later, thieves hitched up the trailer carrying the family’s blue Can-Am, nicknamed “Bluey” by Natalie Gutierrez’s daughters, and drove off.
“We woke up in the middle of the night because our dogs were barking, and we heard a screeching sound,” Gutierrez said.
That sound, she soon learned, was the suspects speeding away. In their rush to flee, Gutierrez said they smashed into one of the family’s vehicles.
“It’s something you spend your hard-earned money on,” she said. “To come outside and see that it’s not there, it’s just very sad.”
Gutierrez filed a police report with the Houston Police Department, but said, “I have not heard one thing from them.”
Gutierrez told KHOU 11 the trailer and side-by-side have a tracking device installed, but only police can request access to the GPS data from the monitoring company. She said she was told it would take at least 10 days for a detective to be assigned due to staffing shortages, despite the active tracker on her property.
When KHOU 11 contacted HPD to ask about it, we were told the same thing by pothe lice.
However, shortly after the newsroom’s calls, a rep of the department called us informing us that they would assign a detective to her case right away.
Moments later, Gutierrez said she received a call from a detective informing her he had been assigned her case. She added that the detective immediately began working to retrieve the tracker information.
