The City of Houston, faced with a rash of robberies and murders in convenience stores, is finally cracking down.
Not on the criminals, of course, but on shopkeepers:
Convenience store owners would have to register their businesses with the city and install cameras, drop safes and panic buttons under a proposal headed to the City Council in the coming weeks.
The council’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee voted Monday to recommend the proposed ordinance, aimed at controlling crime at hundreds of convenience stores across the city, to the full council, where it could be adopted within a month.
The ordinance would mandate such tough-on-crime measures as:
•Signage: “No loitering” and “No trespassing” signs posted on doors and walls, and “height strips” placed on doors, so a clerk can estimate a retreating robber’s height for later identification to police.
I feel safer already. Well, not really, considering we still have an understaffed police department and an absentee chief.
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Thats the city for you. Big Business and make as much money as possible
I think that city council should pass an ordinance that requires criminals obtain a license and register their criminal intent prior to actually committing a crime.
I think tri3 has hit on something. We could also require the criminals to give DNA so that the HPD Crime Lab would have it on file and…………………….on second thought, maybe not.
Maybe they should just outlaw criminal behavior. That ought to do it. Remember, with the dems, it’s only the intent that matters, not what actually does happen.
“The council’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee”…..
It seems every government agency now has a Homeland Security Committee coiled to take any kind of action to simply justify their existence.
Pinheads run amok in the name of homeland security.
Does LST have a Homeland Security committee?.
Maybe we could just hire phil m to ride around in his big old truck and talk tough. That should scare all the criminals so bad they will go stright.
trl3, nah, he can’t take the pay cut.
/just kidding phil
The ordiance should also require the store owner to investigate the crime, track down and make citizen’s arrest of the criminal.
How are they suppose to pay for this, hold back some the city’s portion of the sales tax money?? And what is the penalty for non-compliance—arrest the store owner so he/she can’t be robbed????
Uh, hellooooooooo - I already see these signs and height markers at stores. Is this a case of no new solutions?
Long ago, in my programming days, I was on a project where an Indian (strong Asian Indian accent) was an advisor. I can still remember him telling one of our guys: “No, no, don’t do that! It does nothing! If you do that, it is just monkey work!”
This sounds like a buttload of monkey work from the city.
My question is: Who’s going to pay for it?
(Yeah, I know. Pesky little detail of practicality.)
Hmmmmm. Does the City Council’s recommendation include a waiver of the city’s fees for alarm registration and response? And a credit for their portion of the sales tax on the now-required equipment?
– Ken, not even getting into the issue of property rights
I have a better idea, why doesn’t the city just pass an ordiance requiring all store owners to hire armed security so that the city’s police officers would have a lot of extra off-duty work thereby compensating them for what the city can’t.
This is like Houston attacking the graffiti problem by fining people whose property has been graffiti’d.
#12 I was just going to type that! I saw an interview of a shop owner, who finds it difficult to keep paying for the removal of graffiti painted on his walls. Understaffed departments, a police chief who lives out of town, and a city council made up of idiots….. wow we are in for a ride. But, by golly we have a toy train, and it probably carries about 6 people daily, unless there is something going on downtown.
#8 Oh hell no, the quickest way to get into trouble isn’t robbing a convenience store, it’s doing the cop’s or politician’s job for them: prison it is, you trouble maker.
Why doesn’t the city just require the owners install claymores (direction anti-personnel mines) under the counters with a panic button . . . damn, that’s doing the cop’s job, ain’t it?
And it was such a good idea.
Every good clerk knows ya give coffee and donuts to cops so they hang around your place. Maybe they should hire sexier clerks?
Indeed. The czar is a guy in a big pickup truck with big burly arms…or so I’ve been told.
#13
Bread and circuses, eh?
If he’s in the city limits Houston actually has an excellent anti-graffiti task force where they use the labor of the little punks on probation.
13 AW
Yes, but more importantly the zoo train will soon connect to the toy train.
Talk about a world class city.
Why not make it mandatory for all clerks to carry an M-16?
Actually most these things are no-brainers and if I owned a store I’d probably choose to employ many of them (along with the M16.)
Maybe this is just another case of a “feel good” ordinance to foster an illusion that the city council earns its keep, but still I’m instinctively looking for a money trail.
The next leg of the toy train will go right by my neighborhood. I’m actually looking forward to riding it downtown to baseball games, and if I worked downtown I’d ride it every day. I’d still vote against it if I was ever given a chance.
Maybe Joe Horn would come out of retirement? He’d make a dandy City Councilman.
Maybe the new DA won’t press charges for graffiti inspired shootings? That would solve the problem.
Well since Phil considers being a police officer just one step above a sanitation worker and it takes no brains, you get to ride around all day, get fat and be lazy, along with stellar pay rates, it is amazing that there is a manpower shortage!
Bob! That would be SO cool, all the clerks with a little CAR dangling off a combat rig, chest high! When someone walks in, they just slide their hand up on the grip, with their index finger extended. Got to have good trigger discipline!
I feel a SNL skit coming on.
It would really cut down on gas drive-offs, too. And at the rate energy is rising, a drive-off may soon be a capital offense anyway.
Hamous it’s my understanding the city used to have a crew that did the clean up for the store owner, but city council decided it was too expensive and TIME CONSUMING, so they ruled not too very long ago, the shop keeper must do it, at their own expense.
I can just see it now, customer sues convenience store because it doesn’t have working security cameras or has too many posters in the window obscuring public view from the outside or that the customer was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was an unwilling particpant in a robbery. Or how about this one, customer sues store owner because he/she if offended by graffiti on the outside walls.
I like the no trespassing signs idea. It will help the police with 60 illegals hanging around the store looking for work. It will help the store, and the neighbors.
#25 Robert, I’m not sure how long the store owner has to remove the graffiti, but they pay a fine if they don’t do it quickly enough.
Sounds like the grafiti ordinance… blame the victims not the criminal.
#24 AW - not unless it was just canceled in the last few weeks. I spoke to the woman that manages the program in my area and it was still active. HPD has a waiver you must fill out saying that you agree to let them bring probationers on your property to do the work. You can provide the paint if you want an exact match or they will match it as close as possible. I’ll check with my contact again to verify.
Ok Hamous, you have my curiosity, let me google it. I can’t remember how long ago it was I saw the clip…
Here’s the HPD waiver:
http://www.houstontx.gov/police/npc/images/graffiti_waiver.pdf
I found this, but as I read it, the crews are for graffiti on city property, and free paint is given to private citizens, if they have graffiti. Since you live there Hamous, and I live in Cypress…. I choose to agree with you.
http://www.houstontx.gov/mayor/press/20060622a.html
AW, the one thing I need to check on, the city has created “management districts” that sometimes have programs that may not apply to the entire city. We are in the Greater Northside Management District. I’ll check with my contact at COH and follow up.
The interesting thing I did find, while searching was that graffiti folks have their own web site. It shows art(cough) and changing laws in different areas of the country.
Let me translate this for you - Additional city bureacracy, taxes and fees. Nothing more, nothing less. This is the convenience store equivalent of the “red light cameras”. It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with safety - REVENUE and JOBS, BABY!
#35 Yup
Yep Lawrence, you are right. Has anyone else noticed in the past 2 years or so, the city has been using every means possible to gain revenue? I wonder what’s changed, or what is going on.
#37
We have a fiat money system. What is a dollar actually worth? It’s hard to say (which is by design), but I feel safe in saying that it’s worth less and less as time goes by.
#38 Oh, I hadn’t thought of the devaluing dollar. Would that make such a difference, that we buy red light cameras, ransom a home for mentally challenged folks, and offer twins $400,000 for a lot worth about 1.4 mil, so we can make a pocket park?
Maybe the city needs an ordiance requiring patrons to pay a “cover charge” for entering the store to help curb the cost of those security camera systems for those store owners who can’t handle the costs.
#39
As the balloon expands, the latex gets thinner, wot?
#41 ok ok I get it!………
Robert, the costs of these required things will be passed on to us anyway.
I say we issue a Letter of Marque & Reprisal on fiat money
Reply to No. 42: That cover charge comes out of the pocket’s of the patrons. I only thought of this because of the silly $5 charge for going into adult entertainment businesses where that money is suppose to help abused and battered women like there is a corrolation between the two. Look, government justifies things in many ways. They can’t give up their extravagant live style on the taxpayer’s back so just collect a “fee” so that they don’t use that nasty word “taxes” to cover any new programs that are “feel good”!!!!!
#43 Mutters under breath, why does that sound like a Ron Paul statement?
Thanks to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, more people know about Letters of Marque and Reprisal today then back in 1861.
I wonder when the last LOMAR was issued. Looks like it was before 1856, except for the CSA. Any idea, bob?
Remember the good old days when the “shotgun squads” were positioned in the coolers and came out blazing when needed. Put too much of a dent in the local crime scene to satisfy the politicians since they didn’t have anything else but law and order to run on, so they did away with the solution so there would be a problem.
Rastus, you’re thinking about the old shotgun stakeouts that Pilgrim Cleaners used to do. They were quite effective. And seldom as the perp read his rights before expiring. Usually there were 2-3 dead perps, and the robberies would stop for years.
They are missing the point. A simple “This is a gun free zone” will suffice.