Crime committed every 7 hours in this Houston neighborhood

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — J Moreno Lopez said he was walking home from work with his brother when they heard gunshots from a drive-by shooting just five feet away.

“I wasn’t really particularly scared because these shootings have been happening too long,” said Moreno Lopez, who lives in Houston’s most crime-ridden block. “We just instinctively knew. We just dropped to the ground. We got back up and we left and went home.”

We analyzed every incident reported to Houston police from January 2020 through March 2021. We focused on places where people live and excluded shoplifting offenses as well as crimes at grocery stores, department stores, malls and supermarkets from our analysis to identify the neighborhood with the most crime.

Our analysis found the area with the most crime was on and around the 10900 block of Gulf Freeway, where Los Cabos is located.

“When you go outside in your own neighborhood or basically anywhere you live, how do you feel?” Moreno Lopez asked. “You feel safe. My area, I walk out and the moment I’m first thinking is, ‘Who is going to shoot me today? Who’s going to shoot my car? Who’s going to shoot one of my own family?'” That’s exactly what I’m always thinking.”

In the last 15 months, there’s been 1,616 crimes reported in the half-square mile neighborhood where Moreno Lopez lives, including everything from murders and aggravated assaults to damage, robberies and theft, according to our analysis.

Although crime is rampant in his neighborhood, our investigation found the increase in crime over the last year is widespread across Houston. Our analysis of crime data for the last two years shows 79% of Houston zip codes saw more crime in 2020 compared to 2019.
Overall, there were nearly 30,000 more crimes reported to HPD in 2020 compared to 2019, according to our analysis. That increase means officers have less time to patrol neighborhoods, build meaningful connections with the communities they serve and engage in other outreach that could prevent crime.

HPD Commander Matthew May oversees the district with the most crime-ridden block in Houston. May said there aren’t enough officers to do much more than just respond to 911 calls every day, even in the crime-plagued neighborhood.

May typically only has between 12 and 16 officers in his entire 45-mile district of more than 155,000 residents, stretching from Clear Lake to Airport Boulevard, north of Hobby Airport.

“My patrol officers right now, they are crime-driven. They’re going from call to call to call answering calls for service as they occur,” May said. “They don’t have as much time for proactive, investigatory work as I’d like, but I work with the resources I’ve got.”

‘Getting worse and worse’

The signs of crime are visible every morning at Los Cabos apartment – broken doors and smashed-in windows that are boarded up.

Nearly every single day an apartment complex is broken into, said Neal Verma, of NOVA Asset Management, who oversees Los Cabos.

“The problem that we face is most tenants obviously get extremely scared, they get overwhelmed. They keep hearing stories about crime rising at the properties, rising in Houston in general and it’s very hard to get a handle over it,” Verma said. “Since we’re not the police and since we can’t control the crime in the area, it’s very tough for us to try to mitigate the crime. … We hope that police can do a better job of taking care of crime in the area. We need a lot of help.”

Across the city, incidents were up 13% in 2020, with 256,833 crimes reported to HPD in 2020 compared to about 227,000 crimes reported in 2019.