Evacuees' crimes strain Houston

HOUSTON -- The southwest corner of this city is one sprawling low-rise apartment complex after the next, a once-hot real estate area that died with the 1980s oil bust only to be reborn in the '90s as a low-income, high-crime neighborhood. Now it's Katrina turf.

New Tony's Express, a neighborhood convenience store, is sold out of T-shirts and caps stenciled with the numbers 504, 985, and 337 -- the area codes for New Orleans and southern Louisiana. The emergency room of West Houston Medical Center is so busy treating Hurricane Katrina evacuees the staff jokingly calls itself ''Charity West," a reference to New Orleans's venerable Charity Hospital.

And now, police say that southwest Houston, long recognized as a problem area, is facing another manifestation of the Louisiana exodus: Katrina crime.

Since Sept. 1, when an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Louisianans resettled in Houston after Hurricane Katrina, evacuees are believed to have been involved in 26 slayings, or nearly 17 percent of all homicides. The cases, according to Houston police, involved 34 evacuees -- 19 of them victims and 15 of them suspects.

Late last month, investigators in the Houston Police Department's Gang Murder Squad announced the arrests of eight of 11 suspects believed linked to nine homicides in the city's southwest side and two others in nearby Pasadena, Texas. The slayings occurred since November, and all the suspects are displaced New Orleanians who landed in Houston after the hurricane. ''We did not initiate this effort with the intention of singling out New Orleans or Louisiana people," said Lieutenant Robert Manza, a police spokesman. ''It just so happens that every single one we arrested and three we're looking for are New Orleans residents."

''The message is clear: We're going to relocate these men from apartments in Houston to a prison in Texas," Manza said. ''That's going to be their next home."

An increase in violent crime since Sept. 1 and a spate of homicides over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend involving Katrina evacuees have elicited urgent pleas from Mayor Bill White and Police Chief Harold L. Hurtt to the federal government to help pay the cost of providing increased security and to hire more officers. Hurtt is taking the request to Washington next week as part of a meeting of police chiefs.

Both officials are careful not to blame Houston's recent rise in violent crime solely on Katrina evacuees, saying such statistics were rising last year before the hurricane. They point to law-abiding Louisianans now living in the city and say the crime rate per thousand for the evacuee population is not greater than it was among Houstonians before the influx of Katrina survivors.

But the issue facing the city, officials said, is that Houston's 2 million population grew by about 10 percent virtually overnight, straining all key city services such as schools, hospitals, emergency services, and, particularly, public safety.

''We should not be penalized for opening up our city to folks who lost their homes," Hurtt said in an interview last week. ''We are just trying to help them get back to normal as soon as possible."

Meanwhile, thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees who have been staying in hotels at FEMA's expense will have to pay their own way beginning today unless they were able to arrange extensions from federal officials. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will allow those who received extensions to stay through Feb. 13 or March 1, depending on their circumstances. The agency authorized extensions for evacuees staying in more than 20,000 hotel rooms in more than 40 states. But about 5,000 evacuees nationwide did not contact the agency or were unable to get an extension.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.