Results tagged “policechiefharoldhurtt”

If there's one thing we love, it's an election. And the city has been obliging lately. Melissa Noriega and Roy Morales, the two candidates left standing after last month's special election to fill a vacant at-large city council seat, traded remarks on immigration as early voting began yesterday. Noriega, the clear favorite after garnering 47% of the vote in May, accused Morales of using "fear as a tactic to try to get people worked up."...

A chase that involved three police cars and a suspected vehicle thief led to the death of an innocent 24-year-old woman in a residential area of southeast Houston yesterday. The woman, Rikki Danielle Sanchez, was killed instantly when the car that was being chased crashed into her pickup, sending her "flying" into a brick home. Afterwards, the suspect resisted arrest until a policeman shocked him with a Taser. He was taken to Memorial Hermann with...

Looks like as long as you can keep from winning the lotto, you can also keep from getting killed. Last month, the city recorded only 24 homicides, down 20 percent from January 2006. Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt said that he attributes the decline to HPD's heavy targeting of several hot spots in the city, but indicated that the cold weather might have had something to do with the decline as well. Hurtt hopes to...

A year after Houston welcomed more than a quarter million Katrina refugees, more than 100,000 are still here, and Houstonians aren't happy. West Houston residents who gathered Wednesday at Grace Presbyterian Church to talk about the increased violent crime rate in their part of town blamed evacuees for the problem, reports the Chronicle. Police Chief Harold Hurtt came to the church to discuss a new patrol division aimed at bringing the violence to an end,...

The Chronicle reports this monring that five surveillance cameras will be installed on and near Main Street this fall — a move that could be the beginning of a citywide camera program, if HPD has its way. The initial five cameras, which will go online in October, will be paid for by the Houston Downtown Management District, a group that uses downtown tax money for downtown development, so they don't need the City Council's OK....

With no easy solution to HPD's officer shortage, Police Chief Harold Hurtt has suggested a new way to fight crime: cameras. Hurtt's idea is to place surveillance cameras at crime hotspots like malls, apartment complexes and areas with high rates of prostitution and drug use. The cameras would feed directly to the police department and would be similar to the red-light cameras the city is planning to install at intersections. Similar surveillance systems have drawn criticism in other cities — most recently Dallas, which announced a plan last month to install 34 cameras downtown. But Hurtt poo-poohed concerns over invasions of privacy: