Makin' Friends!

Louisiana Gangs That Fled Katrina Heighten Houston Murder Rate

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- When New Orleans residents streamed into Houston six months ago to escape the floodwaters caused by Hurricane Katrina, they brought in gangs and the violence that goes with them.

The city had 170 homicides from September through Feb. 22, 28 percent more than in the same period a year earlier, according to the Police Department. In 29 cases, displaced Louisianans were the victims, the suspects or both.

Many of the evacuees came from public-housing projects, where gangs engaged in territorial disputes and such crimes as selling drugs. Once connections were re-established, the groups set up drug and prostitution rings and began settling scores, said Police Sergeant Brian Harris, a member of the Gang Murder Squad that Houston formed this year.

``We already had gangs, and the violence level was increasing already,'' said Charles Rotramel, executive director of Youth Advocates, which works with teenagers in crime-ridden neighborhoods of the fourth-largest U.S. city. ``Then you add to that this factor of gangs from New Orleans. They're walking in blind, but looking to make money and establish territory, and their level of violence is really high.''

Through June 30, Houston will spend $6.5 million on overtime pay to add the equivalent of 150 officers to the streets, said Lieutenant Robert Manzo, a spokesman for the Police Department. Houston is seeking reimbursement for some of the money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said.

`Nature of the Beast'
Police estimate that Houston's population has grown as much as 150,000 since Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The city has about 2 million people.

Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, killed 1,330 people and forced 770,000 from their homes. The storm displaced the most Americans since the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s. Hurricane Rita, which struck near the Texas-Louisiana border in September, contributed to the flow of evacuees into Houston.

The exodus from the storm-torn region made an increase in crime inevitable, said Angelo Edwards, a neighborhood activist with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn.

``It's just the nature of the beast,'' said Edwards, a New Orleans business consultant who moved to Houston and became vice president of the Acorn Katrina Survivors Association.

Crime didn't rise right away, Harris said, because relief funds were being distributed to evacuees, and gang members were looking for old friends.


Sharing Information
The gangs were a patchwork of groups that operated around housing projects, Edwards said. Before Katrina, the city ran 10 developments, according to the New Orleans Housing Authority's Web site. The projects and more than 700 sites scattered across the city served about 49,000 residents.

The first Houston murder attributed to evacuees occurred on Nov. 20, when a 21-year-old man was shot in the head, chest and arm at a pool hall.

As killings and robberies mounted, police on Jan. 15 formed the 10-member Gang Murder Squad, which linked many of the crimes through victims, suspects, witnesses and vehicles. The squad on Jan. 27 announced the arrests of eight Louisiana evacuees and charges against three more. On Feb. 16, police added five Louisiana transplants to their wanted list.

Harris's group brought New Orleans police officers to Houston to offer their insights on the gangs. ``It helped us understand some of the conflicts, and secondly, provided a lot of intelligence information,'' he said.


Danger Zone
Increased police presence and security measures by apartment landlords helped prevent a larger increase in the murder rate, said Manzo, the police spokesman. The number of homicides this year through the first half of February matched last year's pace.

Most of the added patrols are in southwest Houston, where murders in one police district doubled in the final three months of 2005. The area is home to one-fourth of the 83,300 evacuees who live in government-financed apartments, according to a Houston Chronicle study.

Crime has eased in the past couple of weeks following a spate of thefts and fights after Christmas, said Anil Konotra, 42, owner of the Dollar N Dollar store at the Sharpstown Center in southwest Houston.

Evacuees concentrated in the area, known for crime and gangs, because the larger apartment complexes there readily accepted government rent vouchers, said Acorn's Edwards.
``Some of those apartments just weren't ready to be occupied by a large number of people,'' he said.


School Brawls

Tensions spread into area schools. Initial policies of separate classes and special wristbands for Louisiana students widened the divide between newcomers and locals, said Rotramel of Youth Advocates.

Houston schools last year had ``about a dozen serious altercations'' involving evacuees, the city's Independent School District said in December. A Dec. 7 brawl at a southwest Houston high school led to 27 arrests. Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra increased police presence at the schools by 10 percent.

Like gang members, students are ``trying to be very territorial, and they're trying to establish themselves in this city,'' Rotramel said.

Louisiana students and gangs in Houston share one thing in common: They are outnumbered. There were 5,566 students from New Orleans enrolled in the district as of Jan. 5, according to its figures. In Houston, the city's gangs ran into national groups including MS-13 and the La Tercera Crips.

The disadvantage may offer a chance to get evacuees out of gangs, Rotramel said. ``If you can get kids focused in a different direction and on their future rather than their present, their reasons for joining gangs fall way,'' he said.

to contact the reporter on this story:
Jim Kennett in Houston at jkennett@bloomberg.net.