Is crime up or down? In Houston, concerns are hard to allay.
If you’ve lost hope that crime rate is going to change, the answer is it’s not going to, according to Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo.
“I’m not going to let an election or anything else take away the message we have. When you’re not doing your job, you can’t have any confidence. And when you don’t have that, then people don’t do the things they need to do to make it better,” Acevedo said, during a break in the Mayors’ Forum discussion at the University of Texas-Houston at Clear Lake.
Police shootings at the same time and in the same location are troubling things, he said.
“I’m not looking to say you should be doing better. What I’m saying is we’ve got to be doing better. And when we are doing our job and getting back to where we can be at or a little bit better than we were, then people will see that in the public perception,” Acevedo said.
The Houston crime rate has remained roughly the same since 2008 – the last full year before Hurricane Harvey.
When Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo was asked if Houston crime was up or down while Hurricane Harvey was going on, he said crime was up.