What they don’t say about crime
Politicians’ simplistic narratives fail to portray that the city is neither as safe as it once was nor as dangerous.
A30-second TV spot with Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale is not designed to extrapolate the nuances of criminal activity in a county of 4.6 million people. That’s not what campaign ads are for; they’re designed to push a narrative.
For Alexandra del Moral Mealer, the Republican candidate for county judge and a former U.S. Army captain, crime is a winning issue. Portraying her Democratic opponent, incumbent
Judge Lina Hidalgo, as a failure on public safety has kept the race surprisingly close in a blue county.
So naturally, Mealer teamed up with McIngvale, the indefatigable Houston philanthropist and self-promotion savant, to bolster that message in a recent political ad.
“Trust Alexandra Mealer to make every neighborhood in our county safe,” McIngvale declares, swinging his arms like a major league umpire.
Mealer follows concisely: “Violent crime continues to rise, and as a mom, and a combat veteran, a neighbor, and a voter, I’m out of patience for politicians standing around passing the blame.”
Yet just as it would be completely disingenuous and a bad look for Hidalgo to behave as if Harris County is as safe as Switzerland — particularly as members of the county judge’s staff grapple with their own legal troubles — Mealer’s assertion that “politicians are standing around and passing the blame” is complicated by recent crime data. The truth is that Houston is neither as safe as it once was nor is it as dangerous as she makes it seem.
In a conversation this week with the editorial board, Mealer presented a more nuanced view of the criminal justice system, noting problems such as understaffed agencies to overcrowded jails to a stubborn backlog of criminal cases. Her fluency in discussing public safety is part of the reason why her campaign has earned the support of many local law enforcement groups.
“This is something that is really spiraling out of control,” Mealer told the editorial board. “The county just hasn’t moved with the aggressiveness and the focus that I think the severity of the issue requires.”
Many voters agree with Mealer. A recent University of Houston poll ranked crime and public safety as a leading issue in deciding their county judge vote. Houston saw another increase in homicides last year, a trend that began early in the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. There’s a reflexive tendency by some experts to wave off this crime spike by noting that the homicide rate is still far below the harrowing crime wave of the early ‘90s and pointing to similar spikes in most major cities across the nation. But that context is of little comfort to Houstonians who live in neighborhoods with rampant gang activity; who fear a stray bullet might find one of their children; or who look over their shoulder when getting out of their car at night.
The top-line figures that get the most headlines are homicides, which remain roughly on par with last year’s rate, according to the most recent operational data from the Houston Police Department. As of Friday, there were 276 murders in Houston this year, a 5 percent increase from 2021, which shows that there is still a lot of work to do. We should listen to the families of crime victims and heed their pleas to fix a troubled system, marked both by a state law that guarantees bail to nearly everyone, and yes, by the lenient decisions of some local judges who grant multiple felony bonds and at times refuse to revoke bonds when a defendant is charged with another violent crime.
But too often, politicians on both sides are perpetuating a misleading narrative that Houston is an out-ofcontrol city, run by a lawless defundthe-police crowd. Whether it’s the Democratic district attorney scapegoating misdemeanor bail reform as a “driving factor” behind the crime spike, or supposedly nonpartisan nonprofits claiming liberal judges are allowing “an assault against the community.”
These statements fail to give Houstonians the accurate understanding of crime and safety they need to live their lives and make decisions on everything from where to take a walk and eat out to whether it’s safe to settle down here and start a family.
In fact, the numbers for other violent crimes continue to decline in Houston, in some cases significantly. HPD statistics show that rape offenses have dropped by 29 percent; robbery is down 8 percent; aggravated assault declined by 7 percent; and burglary offenses have dwindled slightly, by 2 percent.
This is not the picture of a city hopelessly overrun by criminals; it’s a hopeful snapshot of incremental progress toward making us all feel a little bit safer. And judging by the vast sums of money city and county officials have spent to tackle crime, it would be difficult to conclude that anybody is “standing around” twiddling their thumbs. Harris County commissioners in February approved $1.3 billion in public safety investments, including additional deputies and detention officers. Mayor Sylvester Turner has leveraged $44 million in federal funds toward his own public safety initiative which included $5.7 million in overtime for HPD patrols with 125 additional officers per day.
Mealer, however, believes much of this spending failed to address the core needs of law enforcement agencies. She noted that the county’s $1.3 billion budget did not satisfy requests from the sheriff, constables, district attorney and fire marshal’s office to add the necessary personnel and patrol officers to effectively tackle a public safety crisis. She wants to see some of the federal funds used to create new programs, such as Hidalgo’s $48 million child care initiative, instead be put toward hiring more prosecutors to clear the massive courthouse backlog, which stands at roughly 135,000 criminal cases down from a peak of around 152,000 last year, according to the DA.
“I just haven’t seen where we’re actually really making progress on getting a criminal justice system that is efficiently or effectively identifying risk of who should be in jail while they’re awaiting trial, quickly getting people to trial, and then having enough law enforcement presence to actually have a deterrence effect,” Mealer told us.
Mealer’s assessment is reasonable. Certainly, the backlog undermines the entire judicial system, forcing the county jail population to swell to unsustainable numbers that cost taxpayers millions. We too believe the DA needs more prosecutors — she could start by first filling the vacancies in her office — and that Hidalgo should show more urgency where crime is concerned. Directing more resources toward hiring officers and restoring safety at the jail are worthwhile policy prescriptions to consider.
These ideas, of course, don’t fit neatly in a campaign soundbite. It’s easier to portray Houston as a decaying metropolis. But where’s the hope in that? And where’s the truth? Somewhere in a scary place where campaigns dare not go: the middle.
Bottom line: anybody who truly cares about crime and finding solutions won’t get answers in a campaign season TV spot.
You already knew that, but it’s easy to get sucked in by the power of political messaging and forget that it’s skewed to alarm and to discredit a political opponent. While Mealer clearly has something to say about crime and ways to address it, no one should think merely removing incumbent politicians and sweeping out a whole crop of judges alone will do the trick and somehow transport us back to crime rates at pre-pandemic levels.
It’s not Mealer’s job to tell you that. Her job is to win back a coveted seat for the Republican Party. Our job is to remind you of the facts, which aren’t nearly as bleak, nor as peachy, as the people vying for your vote would have you believe.