Houston’s Crime Stoppers taps Kahan to lead new victims advocacy program
Once a lightly staffed tip line waging war against crime and chaos, Crime Stoppers of Houston is moving into new territory with the hiring of tenacious victims’ advocate Andy Kahan.
The outspoken and sometimes controversial man in black — who abruptly retired from Houston Police Department earlier this month — is now heading up the nonprofit’s new victims service and advocacy program.
It’s the latest transformation for the longtime Houston institution, which started in 1981 when the city was known as the nation’s murder capital. But in the past three decades, murder rates have fallen and Crime Stoppers has grown into a public safety organization, with programming for kids, outreach efforts for communities and a long track record of solved cases.
“This is a marriage made in heaven,” Kahan said Thursday. “Things happen for reasons, but the fact that I’m sitting here in Crime Stoppers doing what I’m able to do best tells me that the crime gods were once again looking out for me.”
In his new role, he’ll do much of the same advocacy work he’s always done, lobbying for victims’ rights legislation, offering support to grief-stricken families, pushing to keep prisoners behind bars and showing off his collection of bizarre crime swag to anyone inclined to swing by his office. Now, he’ll just be doing it in an office that overlooks Midtown, instead of one squirreled away in an upper floor of police headquarters.
“I’m going to be able to work with a team that will give me the support and backing that I quite frankly hadn’t had,” Kahan said.
The 58-year-old transplant from the northeast has long been a lightning rod in the local criminal justice community, and not everyone sees the new post as a plus for the anti-crime organization.
“They will regret it — it will damage the reputation of an organization that has done some of the finest supportive investigation and preventive work in
“Things happen for reasons, but the fact that I’m sitting here in Crime Stoppers doing what I’m able to do best tells me that the crime gods were once again looking out for me.” Andy Kahan, Crime Stoppers victims service and advocacy program director
our city’s law enforcement,” said longtime prison reform activist Ray Hill. “To him, if you’re accused you’re guilty.”
A former parole officer, Kahan built a name for himself waging a crusade against the sale of murderabilia and the release of sex offenders. He started his tenure with the city of Houston in the early 1990s as a victims advocate in the mayor’s office. He took the newly created position just before the brutal rape and murder of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña helped galvanize the victims’ rights movement at the beginning of a tough-on-crime decade.
The teens vanished — 25 years ago this weekend — on their way home from a party when they took a shortcut through T.C. Jester Park and stumbled into a gang initiation ceremony.
It was a Crime Stoppers tip that cracked the case and helped garner recognition for the budding and blunt advocate, who launched a crusade to convince the state to let families of crime victims view executions.
They won that right starting in 1996.
In the years that followed, the victims’ rights movement has receded, but the city’s Crime Stoppers has expanded. In 1997, the organization branched out from existing solely as a police-staffed tip line to offering educational presentations to middle and high school students.
In 2013, Rania Mankarious took over as the Crime Stoppers CEO, bringing in a broader vision for the group.
“Crime Stoppers was really at a turning point,” she said. “We were moving from reactionary to preventative. We wanted to bill ourselves as your neighborhood public safety nonprofit and turn it from an anonymous entity for tipsters into the hub for everything related to crime prevention.”
That was just after the Sandy Hook shooting, a watershed moment that pushed the group into expanding its educational offerings to elementary school students and stepping up programs to help get guns out of schools.
Then in 2017, the organization got its own building, a modern-looking structure on Main Street in Midtown.
“We’re the largest Crime Stoppers and the first to ever have a headquarters anywhere in the world,” Mankarious said. Since their inception, Crime Stoppers has rewarded more than 22,000 tipsters and aided in the arrest or charging of more than 26,000 suspects with more than $11 million in pay-outs.
The group’s rewards are funded through court fees, but the organization itself is paid for with fundraisers and donations, all culled from fervent supporters in the survivors’ community.
It was those supporters who pushed Crime Stoppers to take the next step and bring on Kahan. As word of his impending departure from the Houston Police Department sparked rumors and speculation in recent weeks, Mankarious found herself fielding dozens of calls and emails from Kahan’s fans, begging her to find a place for him.
She’s not worried about the naysayers.
“Andy at his core is a big heart,” she said. “In his quest to find justice his passion can be interpreted different ways — but for me it’s really all about his compassion. That, and doing literally whatever it takes to keep our community safe.”