‘I hate that I came back’
Crime-fighting plan at Haverstock Hills still faces obstacles
A former America’s Next Top Model contestant was likely the first person the gunman targeted.
He fired an AR-15 on a Sunday evening in March inside the Haverstock Hills apartment complex in northeast Harris County. He aimed at the former contestant, 32-year-old Brandy Rusher. Her brother tried to protect her. The bullet headed for Rusher pierced his hand instead.
A second round of gunfire hit Rusher, in the pelvis and back, according to police. She lay on the ground, playing dead, as the shooter opened fire at her family, her friends and residents of Haverstock Hills.
Brutal shootings were supposed to be a thing of the past at the troubled apartments. Haverstock Hills was supposed to be rid of crime thanks to two gang injunctions — civil suits that banned nearly 100 suspected gang members from the complex and surrounding area — and a host of social service programs. The first injunction in 2010 was the first of its kind in Harris County.
Data compiled by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and obtained by the Houston Chronicle indicates the complex is somewhat safer than it was seven years ago. Calls to the sheriff’s office for burglaries, robberies and disturbances involving weapons have dropped. Yet, after an initial dip, calls for assaults started to rise after 2014, the year the second injunction went into effect.
And it’s not clear how much of a role the gang injunctions had on what crime was curtailed. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who drafted the 2010 injunction as an attorney for then-DA Pat Lykos’ office, said she is doubtful enforcement today is where it needs to be to protect residents.
“(Efforts) just withered,” said Ogg, who was elected in November. “I don’t know (whether) the individuals that were identified in the former permanent injunctions have anything to do with the current level of violence. It just needs to be examined. And we haven’t have time to do that yet.”
Residents, it appears, agree. Some said Haverstock Hills wasn’t as rough as its reputation. But those milling around the property in the days following the shooting that left two dead and four injured said they didn’t feel the effects of offduty deputies patrolling the grounds or the zerotolerance gang policy.
They felt unsafe. They wanted out. Some wanted the apartments razed.
“I hate that I came back,” said 23-year-old Richnique Brooks, who had previously lived at the complex, left and returned. A month after the gunfire, Brooks, her mother and her two young sons were living out of boxes. They started packing immediately after the shooting. A tough reputation
The sprawling 700unit Haverstock Hills off Aldine Bender Road has had a tough reputation for years.
The first phase was built in the 1970s, when largescale, low-income housing was more typical than it is now. Rent at Haverstock Hills is subsidized on a sliding scale based on income by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
By the 1980s, rival street gangs the Bloods and the Crips started colluding inside the complex’s gates. The apartments became a hub for crack cocaine, shootings, robberies and prostitution.
Longtime residents can point to corners of the grounds where they heard gunfire or saw a fight. From the stoop of an apartment, one resident, who for safety reasons asked to be identified by her middle name, Renee, gestured across the road to an alley near the gated entrance to the community. A few years ago, she said, she heard gunshots. She found a man lying in that alley and sat with him as he died.
In 2002, an organization specializing in affordable housing, Equality Community Housing, bought the property, which was in foreclosure. Intent on turning the complex around, the nonprofit, based in Arizona, brought in new social services. In 2010, it built a 4,400-square-foot community center that offers free classes and computers for the complex’s 2,400 residents and an after-school program for children.
“We knew stepping in that we had a job in front of us to prevent crime,” said Flynann Janisse, president and executive director of Equality Community Housing. “We were also aware that it was going to be a long-term focus for us to get that turned around.” Violence tied to visitors
After early attempts proved fruitless — more than 3,000 calls for service at Haverstock Hills were reported in 2009 alone — the coalition of the property’s managers, owners and law enforcement officials tried a new tactic: a gang injunction.
A similar, though more expansive, proposed injunction in the Houston neighborhood of Southlawn was struck down last year after objections by activists and criminal defense lawyers.
The 2010 injunction banned 47 suspected gang members from entering a 57-acre safety zone that included Haverstock Hills, a neighboring Aldine ISD elementary school and a nearby strip mall.
A second injunction approved in 2014 identified another 47 people as gang members and banned them from Haverstock Hills and a larger surrounding safety zone. The zone encompassed 217 acres and included additional apartment complexes and two more schools.
If the suspected members forbidden from the safety zone stepped foot in Haverstock Hills, they faced a Class A misdemeanor and up to one year in jail.
The reasoning behind the injunctions at Haverstock Hills was most of the crime at the complex stemmed from visitors. Visitors — many of them suspected gang members — would commit strings of minor crimes on the premises that later erupted into violence.
“It was the hanging around that was leading to the violence,” Ogg said. “It was the loitering. It was the activity that preceded the violence that we sought to stop.”
Ogg said the 2010 gang injunction — she was not involved in the 2014 one — coupled with social service efforts made the complex safer, at least in the short term.
By December 2011, five of the suspected gang members banned from the premises had been arrested on-site. Ogg said at the time that prosecutors did not offer plea bargains so violators would serve almost a yearlong sentence.
“You want to send a message: Gangs are not wanted here,” said assistant county attorney Celena Vinson, who helped implement the 2014 gang injunction. “The point is to take back power to these neighborhoods.”
Calls to the sheriff’s office for crimes — including burglaries, robberies and assaults — dropped. Calls for assaults fell from 93 during 2011, the year the first injunction was fully implemented, to 75 in 2014.
Burglaries dropped from 62 in 2011 to 54 in 2014.
“We made a good start,” Ogg said.
But while burglaries continued to fall in the years following the second injunction — reaching a low of 41 in 2016 — efforts don’t appear to have panned out long-term in other ways.
Assaults started to creep up after 2014. Within two years, they were back to 92, just one less than in 2011.
All of the security at Haverstock Hills comes from off-duty deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, who are paid by the complex. The number of deputies working at the apartments dropped, as assaults started to creep up. Between January and May 2010, 33 deputies were approved to work there. By 2017, it was only 20 in the first five months of the year.
The number of deputies patrolling the apartment complex does not reflect the amount of time deputies are on the premises nor Equality Community Housing’s commitment to security, Janisse said.
There was no one on duty during the March shooting, which happened within eyesight of the empty deputies’ office. More security sought
Yet, Haverstock Hills is still typically 98 to 99 percent occupied. Houston needs the affordable housing, Janisse said.
Residents noticed the shift and liked having the law enforcement around. Renee, for one, wished they were there more often.
Deputies haven’t stopped trying to keep unwelcome visitors off the premises. Towings of unauthorized cars at Haverstock Hills skyrocketed in the years following 2010. And in the month following the March shooting, deputies arrested and charged with criminal trespassing at least nine people who were not tenants and came uninvited onto the property or were staying in residents’ apartments in violation of their leases. At least four of them had been booted at least once before. One had been kicked off seven times.
None of them, though, was named in either of the gang injunctions provided to the Chronicle by the district attorney and county attorney’s offices.
Neither was Kenneth Jones, 35, the man accused of shooting Rusher and the other residents and guests in March. Nor his brother, Harvey Jones, 34, who invited the elder Jones onto the premises that day.
The brothers were not on a lease at Haverstock Hills, but the younger Jones was around so often visiting his girlfriend that other residents knew his name.
Gang injunctions have to be updated periodically, Ogg said. New members move in and replace those who have been banned from the safety zone.
The recent shooting has not yet prompted the DA’s office to pursue a third injunction, but she would not rule out adding another, if it could be effective, Ogg said.
Ogg herself came out against the Southlawn injunction, arguing it was too broad and lacked community support.
Once a handful of criminal defense attorneys learned of the implementation of gang injunctions through the Southlawn case, the attorneys vowed to fight any future attempts by Harris County.
“We really felt like it was a blatant violation of people’s constitutional rights,” said Jennifer Gaut, an attorney who represented people named in the Southlawn injunction, which banned 92 suspected gang members from just over 2 square miles.
In Southlawn, representatives from the county attorney, district attorney and mayor’s offices and the criminal defense attorneys meet regularly to find other strategies to improve safety in the neighborhood, Gaut said.
Back at Haverstock Hills, Equality Community Housing, the management firm, J. Allen Management Company, and county officials meet regularly as well.
Equality Community Housing started implementing changes — installing more lighting, securing the front gate of the property, which was previously left open. Leaving isn’t easy
For most people injured in the March shooting, it’s too little, too late. Four family members and three people who were injured are suing Equality Community Housing and J. Allen Management for gross negligence. They’re seeking more than $1 million in damages, alleging the owner and management companies’ lax security put residents and visitors at risk for injury, said Benny Agosto Jr., a partner at the law firm Abraham Watkins and lead attorney on the case.
The lawsuit was filed May 12.
About a week after the shooting, Arthur Larkin, 47, one of the residents who was injured, returned to Haverstock Hills, his arm bandaged from one of the bullets police believe the elder Jones fired into the crowd.
Larkin walked through the complex with his toddler granddaughter — he is there most days watching her.
“Lee Lee!” A passerby called out, referring to Larkin by his nickname. “How are you doing?”
“I’m just fine,” He responded.
Larkin’s half-brother, Christopher Beatty, 33, and Rusher’s brother, Gary Wayne Rusher, 31, were both killed in the gunfire.
Beatty’s father sat outside of his apartment, smoking a cigarette. One of Beatty’s other brothers wore a T-shirt with Beatty and Wayne Rusher’s pictures on them.
Around him, residents talked about leaving. But few at Haverstock Hills have other options.
Said one resident: “If it were that easy for me to get up and leave, I wouldn’t be here.”
“You want to send a message: Gangs are not wanted here. The point is to take back power to these neighborhoods.” Celena Vinson, assistant county attorney, who helped implement the 2014 gang injunction