Texas Town Cuts Crime By 61% After Firing Its Police

Sometimes the fence eats the crop, so it would be wise to beat the fence.

Sharpstown in Texas fired its entire police department in 2012, after which it experienced a remarkable drop in crime----by 61%.

This community of 66,000, southwest of Houston, refused to renew its contract with the constable's office and just dismissed the police, according to sputnik.

Instead, the Sharpstown Civic Association took SEAL Security Solutions, a private firm, on hire, to look after their streets.

 "Since we've been in there, an independent crime study that they've had done [indicates] we've reduced the crime by 61% in just 20 months," James Alexander, Director of Operations for SEAL, told guns.com

Supporters of SEAL are clear that government cops are not as trustworthy as private ones, because they are part of the state, and are slow to change. They are not driven by "efficiency" or "threats from liability," as they are both redundant when a tax farm can replenish the funds, according to freethoughtproject.

The strategy of SEAL is simple. Its officers are on continuous patrol all over the city, which is opposed to the sporadic presence of the constables.

"On a constable patrol contract, it's either a 70/30 or an 80/20," Alexander said. "Meaning they say they patrol your community 70 percent of the time, [while] 30 percent of the time they use for running calls out of your area or writing reports."

Moreover, SEAL depends on crime statistics when it designs its patrolling. "The second thing that drastically reduces the crime is that we do directed patrols, meaning we don't just put an officer out there and say 'here, go patrol,'" he said. "We look at recent crime stats, and we work off of those crime stats. So if we have hotspots in those areas say for that month, we focus and concentrate our efforts around those hotspots."

In a comparative assessment of conventional as well as the SEAL model, Alexander said that "Law enforcement officers are trained to be reactive. They're out there to run calls, they're running one call to another, so they're reacting to something that's already happened. Private security, the way that we train our guys, is more proactive, meaning that we're in the community proactively patrolling to prevent those crimes."

There is another advantage that Sharpstown has reaped---money. It is saving $200,000 annually over the previous contract, and they have increased the number of patrol officers for less funds.

Till today, over 70 communities in Harris County, where Sharpstown is located, have contracts with SEAL, according to guns.com.