Heights residents upset over response time to burglary

(10/02/07 - KTRK/HOUSTON) (KTRK) -- Several witnesses in a Heights area neighborhood watched a home burglary in progress Tuesday afternoon.

The residents on Prince Street say they repeatedly called 911. And while their calls were answered, it was the response time that has them upset.

Ben Shwarts and his family are cleaning up their home in Timbergrove Manor.

"The living room was ransacked, glass from the back door all over the living room," he said.

Mindy Herrera says she thought she was being a good neighbor by calling police after she peered out her window and saw two suspicious young men near the Shwarts home.

"I told them what they were wearing exactly, what time they were in, where they were going," she said.

Herrera says she gave police a play by play, but as the clock ticked on, the police did not come.

"I'm mad because it seems we aren't focused on the right things in the city," said Herrerra.

She even followed the suspects and snapped pictures of the suspects leaving on foot with her neighbor's electronics packed up in duffle bags.

A closer look at records from HPD show the first call came in at 1:33pm and there were at least four additional calls before officers were dispatched at 2:50pm. Patrol units did not arrive until 3:06pm.

"I understand the police have busy things to do, but I would have liked it to be a little sooner," said Shwarts.

An HPD officer at the scene says the "suspicious person" label on the call could be to blame and that "it should have been a priority call" and had it been, "we probably would've caught these guys".

Herrera is sure of it.

"I think they could've caught the two guys, I really believe because they were in the home 15 to 20 minutes," she said.

Crime scene officers lifted prints at the scene. They are hopeful those, along with the pictures, will give them another chance at catching the thieves.
(Copyright © 2007, KTRK-TV)

Get more News »

• Email
• Print
• Report a typo
•