HOUSTON — Crime trends in Houston have been front and center since a controversial sermon by Second Baptist Church Pastor Ed Young in which he claimed Houston was the most dangerous city in America.
Since then, the city has responded by releasing crime data refuting the pastor's claims.
On Thursday, Crime Stoppers released a new website it said has been in the works for months. It helps track the latest crime data across Harris County.
It's called the Glenda Gordy Research Center.
"Our goal at Crime Stoppers was simply to show exactly the numbers, no narrative, no opinion on it, simply to show what is happening in our county," said Sydney Zuiker, with Crime Stoppers of Houston.
It breaks down crimes into six key categories:
- Homicide
- Aggravated robbery
- Aggravated sexual assault
- Aggravated assault
- Human trafficking
- Felon in possession of a weapon
Crime Stoppers used Harris County's publicly available data sets and cross checked it with DPS records to get their numbers. The data makes one thing clear.
"We are seeing that it (crime) is plateauing. There's no argument there," Zuiker said. "We're not seeing the spike we did this time last year."
So far in 2022, homicide numbers are at 285. If the numbers stay below 473 for the next three months, Harris County could see its first decline in murders since 2018.
"Month-by-month, those numbers will, unfortunately, continue to grow but we are seeing crime change. The landscape has changed a little bit," Zuiker said.
The same goes for aggravated assaults. So far this year, there have been 3,046. If totals stay below 5,497 by January, it'll be the first decline in more than seven years.
Of note, Crime Stoppers said, are human trafficking cases. Totals this year have already surpassed 2021. And felon in possession of a weapon cases have doubled since 2018 and could still exceed 2021 totals.
"We don't know what could happen in the next few months," Zuiker said.
The site also breaks down who is and isn't getting bond and for how much and what's happening to those cases as they make their way through the justice system.