Houston’s 2016 murder count stable despite spike early in year New police chief Art Acevedo credits mid-year overtime surge and shifting officers from desks to patrol

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo speaks with Mayor Sylvester Turner to announce a large Kush bust last month. Click through the slideshow to see Houston's deadliest murders. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo speaks with Mayor Sylvester Turner to announce a large Kush bust last month. Click through the slideshow to see Houston's deadliest murders. Photo: Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle Photo: Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close Houston’s 2016 murder count stable despite spike early in year 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

By the end of September 2016, Houston already had counted 235 murders, putting the city on pace to reach 345 murders by Dec. 31 — an unlucky 13 percent jump from the previous year.

That did not happen.

Last year’s murder tally will hold steady at 302 murders, according to preliminary Houston Police Department data. That’s one fewer murder than in 2015, though it still exceeds the five-year average by more than a quarter.

The city’s new police chief, Art Acevedo, credits that to an overtime surge late in the year and the shifting of officers from desk jobs to beat patrols.

“Mayor Turner saw that we were on track to go up seriously, and he authorized $2 million in overtime,” Acevedo told the Houston Chronicle on Friday. “We used a big chunk of that to put additional resources in the hot spots.”

The department also moved 175 officers from administrative to patrol duties, the mayor said in a news release Wednesday. The police chief said the additional officers on the street helped deter and interrupt crimes of opportunity.

“When you increase the presence, activity and visibility, those bad outcomes decrease,” Acevedo said. But, he warned, “The gains can be lost.”

The new chief, who came to Houston after nearly a decade as Austin’s police chief, said the overall crime statistics are not alarming, given the city’s enormous population, growth and geographical size.

Acevedo added that, to prevent murders in 2017, he plans to more intensively investigate felonies short of murder while freeing up resources by de-emphasizing minor drug crimes.

“When people are shooting people, we need to treat that as if it were a murder, because the person that commits an aggravated assault today is the same person that’s going to commit a murder.”

He also plans to move forward on a cite-and-release program for low-level drug offenses in partnership with Harris County’s newly installed criminal justice leaders, District Attorney Kim Ogg and Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.

“We’re going to make sure that we leverage and focus on our resources on what matters most to Houstonians, and that’s violent crimes,” he said.

Houston’s stable murder rate comes as some cities see a jump in violent crime. In a news release, Mayor Sylvester Turner pointed out that Chicago saw 762 murders in 2016, the highest tally in 19 years there.

“It is always hard to determine the specific reasons murders and other crimes increase,” Turner said. “Some say it is something we really have no control over. That may be true, but there are early indications the overtime and increased focus have helped, and for that, I am pleased.”

Mitchel Roth, a Sam Houston State University criminal justice professor who wrote a history of HPD, cautioned not to read too much into shifts from year to year or the relatively high tallies in 2015 and 2016.

“You see the waxing and waning of statistics,” he said. “You can’t sustain these drops in murder rates forever.”

With that caveat, Roth also praised the overtime surge.

“I would say that probably helped,” he said. “It’s better than doing nothing, sitting on your hands like a lot of administrations have done.”

The city's murder tally for 2015 — which exceeded the counts in Los Angeles and Philadelphia —showed a significant increase since the 2011 count of 198 murders, the lowest since 1965 and the lowest per capita murder rate ever recorded here.

Murders touched many parts of the city in 2016, as shown by this map of murders reported January through October, the most recently available data.

andrew.kragie@chron.com