HOUSTON, May 6 (UPI) -- Violence among Hurricane Katrina evacuees has accounted for nearly a quarter of homicides in Houston so far this year, police officials said.
Police have investigated 124 homicides since Jan. 1, and 29 of them involved evacuees as victims or attackers, said Capt. Dale Brown of the Houston Police Department.
In the last four months of 2005, evacuees were victims or suspects in 18 homicides, accounting for 13 percent of such crimes during that period. A total of 336 killings were investigated last year, representing a 22 percent increase over 2004, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Brown's analysis of homicide trends -- the numbers were increasing before Katrina evacuees arrived last fall -- came as police began evaluating a 10-day experiment in which a mobile command unit was placed in high-crime neighborhoods.
Police Chief Harold Hurtt said the "framework and the spirit and the knowledge" for community policing -- as represented by the recent mobile command center experiment -- are in place.
He expects "to see a turnaround in overall violent crime, hopefully by the end of June."
