(Anita Hassan/Houston Chronicle)
Houston will likely finish 2011 with the lowest murder count the city has seen in nearly 50 years, preliminary Houston Police Department figures show.
HPD recorded 195 murders for the year as of Friday, a 27.5 percent decrease from the previous year’s total of 269. The preliminary figure doesn’t yet include the death of a 27-year-old woman who police believe was killed in her west Houston apartment on New Year’s Eve.
As long as the 2011 total remains below 200, it would be the lowest since 1965, when 139 people were killed, said HPD homicide division Capt. David Gott.
Harris County’s unincorporated areas also reported fewer murders. The 2011 preliminary total stands at 60 – down more than 7 percent from the 65 in 2010. Murder totals have continued to drop in unincorporated Harris County since 2009, when 87 were reported.
The decrease in local murders mirrors a national trend. The FBI’s midyear statistics released in December show a 6.4 decrease in violent crime, which includes murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
(Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle)
OTHER HEADLINES:
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- F.D.A. Finds Short Supply of Attention Deficit Drugs (New York Times)
OPINION:
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