Part I - Katrina Crime

In choosing not to ask, San Antonio's political leadership potentially turned its back on federal money that Houston has gained by citing an evacuee link to a increasing murder rate and other violent crime.

It also invites speculation and perceptions not necessarily grounded in fact.

City leaders, such as Hardberger, several council members and top police officials, assert the evacuees have had no effect on crime. Those who interact most closely with some of the city's highest concentrations of evacuees, including beat cops, business owners and the evacuees themselves, say the opposite is true.

The San Antonio Express-News spent four months trying to determine whether a link exists between evacuees and crime in San Antonio. Among the highlights were an extensive analysis of crime data and interviews with dozens of street-level officers, community leaders, business owners, residents and evacuees throughout the city:

--Steeply declining rates of violent crime and property crime during the first eight months of 2005 suddenly reversed after they arrived, although there is no proof evacuees caused it. Houston, however, has successfully cited a similar coincidence of suddenly rising crime to argue for more federal money.

--Crime hot spots developed after evacuees arrived in and around some of the 170 apartment complexes where they resettled. For example, one 10-mile stretch of W.W. White Road contributed 20 percent of a citywide spike in armed robberies last fall. In contrast, at least one complex had lower crime after relatively large numbers of evacuees moved in, based on several measures of crime.

--Of the 55 percent spike in San Antonio's murders this year, three suspects and two victims were found to be evacuees. Several other cases have suspected links, but dozens of cases could neither be included nor excluded as related to evacuees. Unlike Houston, the San Antonio Police Department homicide unit never has been asked to methodically look for such a connection that could be cited in a request for federal funds.

--Violence and criminal activity involving evacuees occurred as the result of interaction between San Antonio residents and the new arrivals, often over drugs.

A coincidence of crime

The Louisiana evacuees found much more than a welcoming refuge when they showed up in need at San Antonio's doorstep last summer. Compared with their crime-ridden neighborhoods back home, evacuees found relative peace and security here. Most came from the same few districts responsible for making New Orleans notorious as the nation's most lethally violent city.

But San Antonio had been enjoying eight months of double-digit downturns in serious crime, such as murder, robbery and rape and sexual assaults, when the newcomers began settling into local shelters and hotels on Sept. 2, 2005.

Then the trend, for reasons unknown, reversed significantly in certain categories of crime. By Christmas 2005, San Antonio was beset by double-digit rises in the kind of crime that residents in any city especially fear and loathe.

Compared with the September-to-December period a year earlier, armed robberies of businesses were up 42 percent, and of people up 18 percent. Vehicle theft was up 18 percent, and weapons violations 33 percent, to name a few.

The number of residents' calls for police ballooned and is now on track to set a record by breaking the 1 million mark this year, with an average 8,500 more calls for police per month from September 2005 through July 30 than the same period a year earlier. The swell began just after evacuees arrived, taxing street cops and stretching response times.

The Houston metropolitan area, which received five times as many evacuees but is three times the size of the San Antonio area, experienced a similar coincidence of higher crime after evacuees arrived on a comparative scale.

Neither Houston nor the Express-News was able to examine the only unassailable evidence that would link imported criminal elements to higher crime: last known addresses for either suspects or victims. Many crimes remain unsolved with no suspects to identify.

The absence of suspect arrests and publicly available information that would prove an evacuee link to specific crimes has left some crime victims to draw their own conclusions.

Ed Theo Flores, owner of the family-run Theo's Brake and Tire Service near downtown for 40 years, had experienced only one crime in the business' history, and that was two decades ago. In a few weeks after more than 50 evacuee families moved into the hotel next door to his shop, Flores reported three cars stolen off his lot and a break-in that cost him hundreds of dollars in tools. No arrests were made.

"I'm not blaming anything on the Katrina people," Flores said, choosing his words carefully. "I'm just saying the coincidence is right there."

The hotel did have problems with the evacuees. It was forced to evict a third of the guests for drugs and prostitution, said Janice Maragakis, spokeswoman for hotel owner Accor North America. Police reports confirm an increase in arrests at the address.

More than half of the city's evacuee population now is gone, having begun trickling out of town when Federal Emergency Management Agency housing vouchers started running out last spring, officials report. The overall total crime rate citywide has tapered off.

Today, top police officials are quick to highlight that total crime doesn't look bad.

From September 2005 through July, total crime citywide was up only 2.3 percent and total violent crime came out about even.

"The big picture is that violent crime is down," Police Chief William McManus said.

But total citywide numbers touted by police officials don't tell what happened for many months in neighborhoods after evacuees settled in them.

The period from September 2005 through July shows that several crime categories remained in double-digit higher territory over the same period a year earlier. Those include drug crimes, up 14 percent; total aggravated robberies, up 27 percent; and vehicle theft, up 17 percent.

Open to debate

Houston's attempt to peg a statistical correlation of higher crime rates to the arrival of evacuees has brought in millions of dollars to help pay its police and fire bills. But that city's correlation -- and the Express-News' attempt to replicate Houston's analysis -- is open to debate.

Criminologist Dr. Peter Scharf, director of the University of New Orleans Center for Society, Law and Justice, said the newspaper's findings, as well as Houston's, of the apparent shifts in the crime trends are "highly probative," suggesting some degree of proof.

"I think you're on to something," Scharf said after examining the Express-News findings. "And the lack of curiosity in your town is really interesting."

Scharf is studying the migration of people from the nation's most criminally prolific districts in New Orleans to Texas and back. He said it helps no one to casually dismiss what to him is an obvious pattern in which violent crime has followed one of the most dangerous criminal underclasses in the country.

It is likely no coincidence, Scharf also said, that crime rates in New Orleans fell from the nation's highest to nearly zero when just those few flooded high-crime districts emptied into Texas. Now, New Orleans crime is approaching old highs -- in new areas -- as evacuees settle in them, Scharf said.

Still, he cautioned that correlating a short-term crime spike with the arrival of evacuees is at best a crude barometer justifying more study and cannot be used to rule out other possible causes of a crime trend.

Other criminologists go further.

"I think saying that comes pretty close to demonizing people who were evacuated. All you can say is that's interesting, that went up," said Dr. Michael J. Gilbert, associate professor in the University of Texas at San Antonio criminal justice department and Mayor Phil Hardberger's appointee to a local crime commission.

"While that's perfectly rational thinking, it may be misleading in terms of what this data may actually mean. I think they're (city of Houston) trying to make the best case they can to get money when it's not defensible."

He and other experts say the coincidence that a sudden spike in major crime occurred with the arrival of evacuees might easily be explained by population increases, shifts in police tactics or changing drug trade dynamics.

Albert Steven Dietz, a criminal justice professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, said the post-September crime rate jumps in San Antonio indicate to him that some evacuees may have contributed out of proportion to their numbers -- but for just the first few months of their residency.

He said a logical assumption is that the simple crime trend becomes less indicative after evacuees disburse throughout the city and, for instance, find opportunities to leave the criminal underworld, if they were part of it.

Is perception reality?

While nearly impossible to easily verify the origins of all arrestees through available public records, a perception accompanies the pattern of increasing crime: Based in truth or not, some people who interact closely with evacuees believe elements of that imported population are committing the crimes. Among them are police, prosecutors, apartment complex managers, neighboring residents and business owners.

Perhaps most credibly, though, evacuees themselves in a dozen apartment complexes told the Express-News they believe some in their own ranks are responsible for violence, thievery and drug dealing that have made their own law-abiding lives in San Antonio as miserable as they were in New Orleans.

Among those who came to San Antonio were at least 140 probationers and parolees from Louisiana who hadn't reported to a parole or probation officer in either Texas or their home state, the Express-News reported in July.

Evacuees in the Huntley Manor apartments in East San Antonio, where calls for police jumped after some 50 Katrina evacuee families settled there, tell tales of conflicts involving young Louisiana men that went on for months, even after management, who did not respond to interview requests, arranged extra security.

One police report tells of 10 men chasing off the drivers of a meat delivery truck, then looting the vehicle in a frenzy until it was empty.

Josh Hooper, a young man from New Orleans, boasted of participating in conflicts.

"It got crazy around here. It was shooting and shooting, for real," he said, getting into a car with friends. "We did shoot back. I'm gonna tell you for real. You think somebody shootin' at me and I ain't gonna shoot back? For real. This is Texas; everybody got a gun."

Several evacuees said the complex has settled down noticeably since most of their compatriots moved, a story echoed elsewhere.

Evacuees living in West and North San Antonio complained bitterly about similar problems they say are caused by fellow evacuees, sometimes young men fighting over drugs with young San Antonio men.

"The thugs and criminals here (in San Antonio) met up and socialized with the thugs and criminals from there (New Orleans)," said Stephaney Wyeth, a 58-year-old grandmother from New Orleans, describing the nightly drug dealing, shootings and fights she endured in her Northwest San Antonio complex.

Buyers looking for drugs mistakenly knock on her door all night long, she said.

"It seems like our complex is the whole city's place to come and get drugs," Wyeth said, wishing her fellow evacuees would leave. "We have a lot of criminals in the building."

Yolanda Herbert, 43, blames local San Antonio youths for instigating violence with the New Orleans crowd.

"I think they're just getting with the wrong people," she said. "I believe they're being influenced by other gangsters that's from here who know where to go and what to do."

Others said they were targets of locals interested in stealing financial aid that everyone on the street knew the evacuees received. Evacuee Lavell Simpson said groups of Hispanic youths preyed on the evacuees at his complex near Lackland AFB.

He said a group of three young Hispanics once attacked him "to take me for my jewelry."

"They can tell who we are," Simpson said, sitting on the stairwell leading up to his apartment one afternoon. "We dress different. We talk different. We walk different."

In late July, a Katrina evacuee was shot in the leg during a robbery at his apartment in 3100 block of East Commerce. He had cashed a FEMA check. The robbers got away.

Several hot spots exist

The Express-News tried to discern whether data supported perceptions among evacuees and residents both in and around 10 of the more than 170 apartment complexes where evacuees resettled last fall. The complexes were selected because they hosted high concentrations of evacuees.

Three measurements -- police offense reports, residents' calls for police and total crime offense reports in a half-mile surrounding radius -- showed rises in and around four of the 10 complexes compared with the same time period a year before. Five others showed declines in one or two of those measurements but increases in others. One of the 10 complexes showed declines in all three.

Residents who live in other complexes that took in large numbers of evacuees said what cold hard numbers can't. They've been feeling more afraid -- of evacuees.

Evacuee Trina Boone of New Orleans, a mother of two young children who lives at Artisan at Willow Springs on Gembler Road, showed a bullet hole that was fired through her apartment one morning in June.

"To be honest, they selling a lot of weed," she said. "We have a lot of fightin' and shootin', all kinds of whatnot; that's why I'm moving out of here."

Another hot spot centers on an urban strip of W.W. White Road on San Antonio's East Side, where businesses from major chains to small eateries sustained a spike in armed robberies that frightened owners into organizing to defend themselves.

Crime data support their claims, but in other parts of the city, residents made claims against evacuees that data did not appear to support.

For instance, Nette Hinton, a retired U.S. Customs officer and member of Dignowity Hill Homeowners Association east of downtown, blamed evacuees who she believed traveled from other parts of the city to commit crimes along a stretch of Hackberry Street that police had worked years to reduce.

An analysis of crime data showed crime and calls for police service on and around Hackberry Street actually fell after evacuees came to San Antonio.

Still, Hinton believes political timidity has caused city officials to turn a blind eye to concerns like hers.

The former agent said leaders "probably hesitate to point fingers at the bad elements because it's antithetical to the kindly face we presented to Katrina evacuees. I think we're embarrassed to say there were some thugs and they're still here preying on people."

Not to wonder why

In Houston, which also received five times as many evacuees as San Antonio, the statistical impact is not much greater because its population is three times the Alamo City's size.

After tracing murders and noting leaps in other violent crime near resettlement areas, the administration of Houston Mayor Bill White has aggressively pursued more than $30 million in federal money for public safety costs. The money has gone to pay police and fire overtime and for five new police academy training classes.

In San Antonio, police overtime costs have gone up and remained higher since the evacuees came. No evidence has surfaced that these increased costs are linked to serving San Antonio's evacuees. City officials blame various nonpreventable operations for higher overtime costs but do allow for the possibility of evacuee-related services as a cause.

Houston has claimed the evacuee link wholeheartedly, with some success. Houston won an $18 million Department of Justice grant after White lobbied Houston's congressional delegation.

"My opinion is it never hurts to ask," said Gary E. Gray, assistant director for Houston's finance department. "If you don't ask what's possible, nothing's going to happen."

A number of San Antonio city leaders, including top police commanders, professed ignorance of Houston's problem with "Katrina crime" and its pursuit of federal funds and said they saw no need to follow suit. Yet money is tight.

San Antonio's leaders, voting last month on a new budget, had to scrimp and scrape $2.4 million in city tax money out of next year's budget to help fund a 54-officer addition to its 2,069-member force that McManus said was hundreds short of what is needed.

In San Antonio, police overtime costs were falling steadily for the eight months before evacuees arrived, then from September 2005 through December rose to a record $6.7 million, of which $4 million was evacuee-related and reimbursed by FEMA, according to figures supplied by the city's finance department.

Houston has fought to recover more of the costs than it was reimbursed during that four-month period, as well as extra costs through May.

San Antonio's police overtime costs were up 11 percent from January through May, amounting to $400,000 more over the same period a year earlier.

Houston has also sought federal money for fire department overtime since the initial influx of evacuees.

Last October, before the shelters were closed, San Antonio top officials repeatedly assured the media that little anticipated crime had surfaced.

However, data from September 2005 to December show the number of crime reports generated from a half-mile area around the KellyUSA shelter spiked more than 160 percent, from 27 to 71, as a result of robberies, burglaries and drugs.

One office that did try to track crime related to evacuees is the Bexar County district attorney's office, which identified at least 135 prosecutions of evacuees staying in shelters last fall. Offenses ranged from rape to petty larceny and theft. One evacuee was charged with murder.

The DA's office initiated the count, First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg said, should it need to justify federal funding requests later, but let the program lapse after the shelters emptied. A Police Department effort to code evacuee arrests also ended after a short time for reasons that remain unclear.

"I certainly think the impact has been much more, much more" than the 135 criminal prosecutions, Herberg said. "I think we're all aware of that. There's been a criminal element over there that has become a criminal element here."

Yet most other public officials posit various other causes for more crime while excluding evacuees. Councilwoman Sheila McNeil, whose district is bedeviled by a spiking number of armed robberies, dismissed the evacuees as a possible contributor.

"Part of it happens during the Christmas holidays," McNeil said of the robberies. "No one speculated what it could be, just Christmas time and people needed extra money. I've talked to our police officers and they have not given me that indication (of an evacuee link)."

In August, as the council was considering the slim police-hiring budget, Hardberger also excluded evacuees and blamed higher crime on an annual summer cycle. When asked if he'd ever considered that evacuees he embraced a year earlier brought crime to his city, the mayor said: "I don't believe the statistics will support that in San Antonio."

He said he was not interested in learning if it was true so the city might benefit from federal money.

"I know the statistics are up," Hardberger said. "But I'm not seeking a scapegoat here."

Several hours after that interview, however, the mayor phoned to say he'd had a change of heart and had asked City Manager Sheryl Sculley to examine the question.

"We need to look at the facts, and if we're going to look at the facts you'd better gather the facts first, and that's what I'm going to be doing," Hardberger said.

Two weeks later, the mayor's initiative produced a single-page interoffice memo from James Glass, manager of the SAPD Strategic Analysis and Mapping Office, to McManus.

The Aug. 16 memo titled "Analysis of Crime & Katrina Evacuees," cited an evacuee population number between five and six times lower than the nearly 30,000 that FEMA and Red Cross officials provided to the Express-News.

It went on to state in part, "the results from this micro level analysis are inconclusive" and that more study of updated information would be necessary. Police spokesman Gabe Trevino dismissed the short study, saying "That doesn't tell you anything. We can't say one way or another."

But when questioned about a possible Katrina link to higher crime and federal money, McManus cited the memo as grounds for why he was not inclined to order a more rigorous examination.

"We can't pinpoint any increases in crime to any particular population," he said.

The disinclination to learn more has carried over into enforcement strategy. Apartment complexes with large numbers of evacuees never figured into a special police task force that McManus deployed for 60 days this summer to target high crime areas, even though SAPD Capt. Cris Anderson, its commander, said he believed an evacuee-crime link existed.

Since Katrina evacuees arrived, Anderson said one night as his task force went into action where no evacuees lived, "there are more hot spots and violent pockets in town, and I just don't believe it's coincidental."

In contrast, a similar counter-crime task force fielded by Houston focused on evacuee complexes.

Gilbert, the UTSA criminologist, said all the debate about Katrina crime in Houston and perceptions about it in San Antonio should be viewed through a wider lens of time.

Compared with high violent crime in the late 1980s, San Antonio is enjoying historically low crime overall, even with its new population, in defiance of what studies like those he has authored show: Crime is usually higher in poor communities.

"San Antonio is a very poor city," he said. "And yet we have a very safe city, comparatively."