City to be hub for initiative against gangs
Agents to be reassigned in Abbott’s $500K push
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday that his office will immediately reassign Texas special agents and establish a tactical center in Houston to curb an increase in crimes and killings by violent gangs in the city.
The governor announced his plan to thwart violence during a morning news conference and spent the first few minutes reading a list of crimes allegedly committed by gangs in Houston since January.
Abbott concentrated in particular on MS-13 — a notorious El Salvadoran-based gang known for recruiting members as young as 13, many of them in the U.S. illegally.
One of the most recent slayings attributed to MS-13 involved the February death of a Jersey Village teen who was shot in the head, neck and chest and then dumped near a service road in southwest Houston.
Two men have since been charged in her death.
“These are just the headlines,” he said, noting authorities are routinely investi-
gating gang-related crimes that often don’t reach the public’s eye.
The announcement of the $500,000 initiative comes just a month after Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo announced his own plans to confront gang violence by reallocating resources across Houston to target high-crime areas.
Abbott was joined by FBI agents and Steven McCraw, Texas Department of Public Safety director.
HPD absent
Absent from the announcement was Acevedo or any other HPD representative.
Abbott and McCraw said the initiative will include working with regional agencies, but they did not say what specific role, if any, HPD would play in the new task force.
HPD officials did not comment on why they were absent from the governor’s nenws conference and did not specify how the agency will work with the state.
But Acevedo released a brief, general statement Monday afternoon.
“Support from the Criminal Justice Division of the Governor’s Office to reduce violent gang crime shows support to the hard working men and women of our federal, state and local law enforcement community who dedicate themselves each day to serve our citizens through crime prevention, response and assistance,” he wrote.
Continued community engagement with residents coupled with transparency, accountability and coordination with regional partners will strengthen crime reduction efforts, he added.
Abbott and other officials Monday attributed the increase in gang violence in the Houston area to a large population of violent offenders, a concentration of gangs and a high number of violent criminals here illegally. The flow of unaccompanied minors coming across the border from Central America is a contributory factor, they said.
“Does this impact crime? Absolutely,” McCraw said. “Roughly 21 percent (of MS-13 members) are here illegally at any given time,”
‘Law and order’
In 2016, there were 302 slayings in the Houston area.
About 55 of those were identified as gang-related, according to a presentation by HPD to city leaders in February.
Furthermore, Houston has documented more than 19,800 document gang members across more than 350 gangs.
For now, Abbott said this is a Houston-based initiative. Enforcement measures in other large counties with high gang populations like Bexar, Travis and Dallas will continue operating at their current levels, he said.
Abbott said to restore “law and order” the state will establish an aroundthe-clock tactical operations center in Houston and provide $500,000 in new funding from the Governor’s Criminal Justice Division to increase Texas Anti-Gang Center resources in the Houston area.
The new center will be located in the DPS Houston headquarters in northwest Houston. Texas Rangers and DPS special agents will be reassigned to Houston, where they will support local law enforcement.
The FBI also announced it will reassign at least 10 additional agents to Houston.