Mayor launches One Safe Houston

In 2022, there have been more than 40 homicides in Houston already and with all things indicating it will get worse, Mayor Sylvester Turner announced the “One Safe Houston” program, a $44 million investment aimed at crime reduction.

In a release announcing the initiative, the Mayor said, “In 2021, the city launched a Violent Crime Initiative that resulted in the reduction of crime in many identified hot spots. By the end of the initiative, all violent crime categories were reduced except homicide. Sadly, the increase in homicides during the first months of 2022 and felonious assaults on police officers and our fellow Houstonians is a sobering reminder that we must collaborate, as one community to combat our current crime challenges.”

The program will center on four areas: violence reduction and crime prevention; crisis intervention, response and recovery; youth outreach opportunities; and key community partnerships.

To address violence reduction and crime prevention they plan to identify “hot spot” crime neighborhoods to target. This means looking for neighborhoods with the highest levels of violent crime which, he says, will allow them to laser focus on areas of need and strategically place resources to address the problem.

This includes a move to add 125 additional officers to the streets per day through Houston Police Department overtime costing $5.7 million and hiring 15 additional park rangers to enhance security at city parks for $1.9 million over three years.

The program includes a gun buyback initiative which hopes to incentivize the removal of stolen guns from the streets and will be backed by a fund of $1 million.

Other major reforms the Mayor mentioned are to draft an ordinance requiring security cameras for certain classes of businesses the city deems crime is concentrated, the city will also provide $1.5 million to fund the Houston Forensic Science Center to address backlogs with processing, and they will draft an ordinance prohibiting bond companies from request less than the customary 10% required to post bond.

Under crisis intervention, response, and recovery the city wants to put a heavy focus on domestic violence and will be providing $3 million for a new program to reach out to survivors.

To encourage community collaboration and engagement with the overall crime reduction effort, they want to train and deploy outreach workers and violence interrupters to mitigate conflict on the street-level. This program costs $2.5 million and coupled with a $500,000 investment in the Credible Messenger Mentoring program, which trains at-risk youth to avoid further involvement with the criminal justice system, they hope these two programs will encourage average citizens to play an active role in reducing street-level crime.

They also plan to expand the Hire Houston Youth program to find 12,000-15,000 summer jobs for kids and expand other youth programs like the Boys and Girls Club, Youth Police Advisory Council, and Teen and Police Service Academy.

Some critics argue that a $44 million investment is just a drop in the bucket in what is needed to truly address the increase in crime in Houston. The fact that it came a week after the city announced a $100 million investment in a homeless initiative didn’t help alleviate the criticisms that city officials weren’t taking crime as seriously as the public demands. Others question whether providing overtime for 125 officers in a city of 2.3 million is sufficient and what happens when, inevitably, that overtime runs out.

Ultimately the proof will be in the results. Dallas claims the title of being one of the only major cities in the country seeing a decrease in crime in 2021 and 2022, time will tell if Houston will join them.

Charles Blain is the president of Urban Reform.