As the coronavirus pandemic has churned through Houston, causing illness, isolation and stress, violent crime has gone up.
Violent crime, including murders and aggravated assaults, as a whole increased 6 percent in the first six months of 2020 over the same period in 2019 in Houston. Murders increased 7 percent over the same period in 2019, Houston Police Department crime records show. There were 133 in first six months of 2019 and 143 in first six months of 2020.
Aggravated assaults jumped 21 percent overall from the first half of 2019, but after hitting high levels by May the assaults dropped dramatically in June. Robberies and sexual assaults were down.
The Houston statistics differ from those of other large cities in the U.S., which have seen sharp rises in murders but declines in other crimes. A study of 25 large cities — not including Houston — by the New York Times found that violent crime was down 2 percent over 2019 in those other cities but that murder was up 16 percent in relation to last year. Houston, with a more modest rise in murders, as well as the overall rise in all violent crimes, seems to be an outlier.
Changes in local crime rates were not surprising to a law enforcement expert who said the pandemic has upended daily life for people in recent months. “Routines have been disrupted. It does not surprise me to see some disruption in crime trends,” said Phillip Lyons, dean of Sam Houston State University’s College of Criminal Justice.
Lyons said he had expected the pandemic to drive up aggravated assaults due to domestic violence from more families staying home. More of the crimes, he suspects, involve intimate relationships, rather than clashes with strangers.
“As those new cases go up, stress goes up,” Lyons said. “Lockdowns increase. People spend more time in confined spaces with family members, almost certainly people they know very well.”
Experts had also predicted that reports of sexual assault would decrease, as people were isolated and not going to work, school or out with friends who might notice signs of violence.
Police said a scarcity of drugs — due to a disruption in trafficking routes from the pandemic — might have sparked some narcotics-related violent crimes and contributed to the rise in murders. There was a spike in May, including three killings in an hour-long rampage in the Almeda area. Joshua Kelsey has been charged in the killings. Police said he gunned down Louis Hodges following what investigators believe was a heroin buy. Kelsey tracked down two more people — Michael Miller and Juan Garcia — both of whom he knew.
Michael Miller’s roommate told police she heard a knock at their door and then gunshots. She found Miller on the floor of their living room and a man leaving the home. Police initially said the killings were drug-related, although court documents suggest a personal vendetta was a factor.
Relatives of Miller have disputed that their 61-year-old brother, a retired plasterer and avid wood carver, was involved in Kelsey’s criminal activity.
“He was going blind,” Miller’s brother-in-law, David Jones, said. “I’m not even sure if he knew who shot him.”
According to court documents, Kelsey once lived on Miller’s property but was evicted.
“Kelsey blamed them for him being ‘homeless,’” documents state.
“We did a memorial service here,” said Miller’s sister, Elizabeth Jones. “Small number of people. We didn’t really want to get too many involved.”
Ups and downs throughout pandemic
A week-by-week look at crime records reveal that some facets of violent crime — which HPD categorizes as aggravated assault, robbery, sexual assault and murder — shifted amid unprecedented unemployment and as worried Texans hunkered at home to avoid contracting or spreading the virus, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of January to June data. Records for July and August were not yet available because HPD does not share crime data until the end of the following month.
Reports of robberies and sexual assaults began decreasing in March, when the first COVID-19 case was reported in Texas and when sweeping stay-at-home orders were issued, to levels that were predominantly lower than the year prior.
Aggravated assaults had several ups and downs before reaching below-normal levels in June.
There were small spikes in murders in January, April and May.
“Spikes in murder, violent crime, we believe COVID is part of it,” Houston police Chief Art Acevedo said. “The economy is part of it.”
During the period in May when statistics show that violent crime as a whole in Houston was at its highest point of 2020, Lyons said, “They’re out and about they’re drinking at bars. They’re experiencing road rage. And then, lo and behold, we have an increase in COVID-19 cases a week later.”
Spikes in those crimes waned when the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations surged in June: Violent crime plunged about 44 percent between the weeks of May 24 and June 21.
Despite the pandemic and the rise in the 2020 numbers, violent crime in Houston is on pace to be similar to levels seen over the past six years, with an average 1,036 incidents per 100,000 people. University of Pennsylvania professor David Abrams, who conducted a nation-wide study of crime during the pandemic, said that the small rise in Houston murders was “statistical noise and not a meaningful trend.”
‘Too soon to know what it means’
The Houston Police Department does not distinguish whether a violent crime involves domestic violence in its crime data, but violent crimes reported at homes and apartments are up 4 percent compared to last year.
While the overall increase in violent crime is deserving of attention, Lyons continued, he warned that “it’s too soon to know what it means.”
“I think it does raise questions on the veracity of these assumptions on the need for more police, as a disproportionate amount of these offenses are occurring inside households,” Lyons said. “That’s not an area where the police have a great access to deter crime.”
Lyons had, however, expected murders to be higher, he said. There were just 10 more murders in the first half of 2020 than in the first half of 2019.
Since the end of June, police have tallied up at least 77 more murders, putting the city well ahead of last year’s numbers for that period. However, police spokesman John Cannon cautioned, those numbers are unofficial and could include deaths that are not ultimately categorized as homicides.
Stephanie Lamm, Jay R. Jordan and Erin Douglas contributed to this report.
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