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Violence storms city

By The Associated Press

Saturday, January 28, 2006

HOUSTON - Eight members of rival New Orleans gangs who had moved to Houston since Hurricane Katrina have been arrested in connection with the slayings of 11 fellow refugees and other violent crimes, police said Friday.

Investigators, who still are looking for three suspects, said the 11 killed also belonged to the gangs or had some connection to them. Violent crimes attributed to the gangs also have been committed on Houston residents, said police spokesman Alvin Wright.

"They were doing the same thing in New Orleans," Wright said. "The hurricane brought those rivalries to Houston."

The eight suspects arrested yesterday and the three at large are accused of murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and other violent crimes.

Although officials emphasized that the vast majority of the 150,000 Katrina victims who have moved to Houston are law-abiding, they say others are partly responsible for a sharp increase in the city's crime rate in the last few months of 2005.

Houston Mayor Bill White last month asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for a new $6.5 million police task force.

At least 23 evacuees in Houston either are victims or the suspects in the slayings, which occurred between September and December. The deaths accounted for nearly 20 percent of Houston's homicides in that span.

Violence has risen not only on city streets but also at city schools.

Houston's school district -- which absorbed about 6,000 student evacuees -- increased security this month after at least a dozen major fights involving displaced students. The worst incident was a near-riot in a high school lunchroom last month that ended in the arrests of 15 evacuees and 12 local students.

All 11 slayings in Houston took place in the last three months. Nine occurred in the city's high-crime southwest side, and the other two were in the Houston suburb of Pasadena.

"The safety of the city of Houston, its citizens and as well as some of the evacuees depends on us arresting these individuals as soon as possible," said police Chief Harold Hurtt.

Authorities won't name the gangs or say how many members from each group are part of the 11 suspects.

Texas authorities previously captured several fugitives -- at least 10 in the Houston area -- who had applied for federal aid as Katrina refugees but were wanted for violent crimes committed in Louisiana.

Federal authorities have told Texas of more than 300 known sex offenders who had relocated to the state -- only a handful of whom had registered with law enforcement as of late last year.

An additional inquiry that Texas authorities conducted with the National Crime Information Center found 188 people wanted in connection with other crimes.

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