Houston is World-Class!

Here's an excerpt from a local blog:

Chronicle reports on Houston's world-class murder rate
From the Chronicle:
The number of homicides in Houston rose nearly 25 percent during the first three months of 2006, compared with the same period last year, despite a multimillion-dollar police effort in the city's most crime-ridden areas.
The Houston Police Department investigated 90 homicides through Friday, compared with 73 in the first quarter of 2005, police say. That puts the city on track for the deadliest year in more than a decade and would erase the last of the gains made in the 1990s, when the city's homicide tally was cut in half.

Awesome, isn't it? I just love my town. This is just one reason we moved out to the 'burbs. It's just a bonus that I'm now about 1.5 miles from work instead of about 15. There's lots of debate as to whether or not the Katrina folk have had a real impact on the numbers. They're an easy scapegoat, no doubt. But at the same time no one I know feels safer with some of them around. Either way, just adding that many more people to the area, thug as well as upstanding citizen, is going to add to the figures just because of the population increase.