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Residents react to rise in crime in their neighborhoods
Murders in Houston are up a whopping 41% compared to last year. Residents in the crime hotspots say they have never seen it so bad.
HOUSTON - "We have 5,300 police officers attempting to cover 670 square miles so that's a lot of geographical area," said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Just Monday alone police were scrambling to respond to shooting after shooting in the southwest area of town.
"I don't think I've seen it this bad since the 90s," said Al Lloyd with South Magregor Civic Club.
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Lloyd has lived in the area known to police as South Central for decades.
"A lot of gunfire what's more concerning is the rapid gunfire that tells me there's some high-level magazines being used and that's not just an accidental shooting that's somebody going after someone," he said.
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Murders in Houston are up a whopping 41% compared to last year.
"For the first time since I've been Mayor we've gone over 300 murders," said Turner.
The six hotspot areas getting the 100 or more additional officers every day are Westside, South Gessner, North Belt, Southwest, South Central, and Midwest.
So what's driving the rise in violent crime?
"A lot of it has to do with COVID the economy frayed nerves I could go down the line," said Police Chief Art Acevedo. "Part of it as we know some activist judges in the county that are letting very violent criminals in one door and out the other."
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“Right now, nobody is talking about the skyrocketing murder rate and the fact that it is our black and brown communities statistically that are impacted the most by this,” Houston Police Officers’ Union President Joe Gamaldi said.
Most of the added patrols will be in areas where a lot of minorities live.
But the mayor says no one should worry about racial profiling.
"It's no one's intent to engage in racial profiling," Turner said. "The only profile we are attempting to engage in is to identify those people who are violating and committing crimes and to get them off the street."