The Houston Police Officers’ Union has issued a warning that the Texas city is “not safe” and “many suspected murderers and capital murderers” are walking the streets on bonds.
The department is also currently facing major staffing shortages in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots.
Speaking to Fox News, the union’s executive director Ray Hunt said, “I have never in my lifetime – and I’m a lifelong Houstonian – seen this many suspected murderers and capital murderers who are walking the streets of Houston out on multiple bonds.”
“I would not let my wife or my kids walk down the streets of Houston at midnight under any circumstances,” Hunt continued. “It is not safe in major cities in 2024, and it’s not safe here.”
Union President Douglas Griffith explained the department couldn’t retain officers in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We’re in a perfect storm right now,” Griffith said. “We had the George Floyd effect come down. We can’t hire. We can’t retain our officers. The people are leaving left and right.”
“Who in the heck wants to be a police officer in 2024?” Hunt asked, “when every single thing that they’re doing is going to be second-guessed by their body-worn camera that someone can watch three or four times to determine whether or not that officer made the right split-second decision. I don’t know who would want to do that. I could not encourage any of my family to come be a police officer in 2024 with the situation that’s going on.”
Griffith said the shortage is so bad that the department “will never be able to be able to investigate” every case.
The union president also laid part of the blame on the court system for “not doing their job.”
“Their contention is that we can’t hold somebody. We have to give everybody a bond, yes, the first time. Once they violate that bond, they can be held in jail until they go to court again. And we get people on six, seven, eight, nine bonds at one time. And that’s a problem that we have to fix in the courts. And with the DA’s office, you try to make sure that these public offenders can’t be continued to roam the streets and victimize our citizens.”
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