When Leaders Won’t Crack Down On Crime, Citizens Like The Texas Taco Guy Will

For years now, cities have failed to combat rising violent crime. Citizens are fed up and, as a result, are taking action. Such was the case in Houston this weekend when a customer at a taqueria shot and killed an armed robber.

Video footage of the late-night stick-up shows an armed man, clothed in a black ski mask, demanding wallets from diners. As the robber makes his rounds, a male customer in one of the booths can be seen reaching for his concealed handgun before firing nine times into the criminal’s back. Once he ensured the robber was disarmed of what was later reported to be an airsoft gun, the customer returned the other patrons’ stolen goods.

The mysterious vigilante disappeared from the taco shop before law enforcement could question him.

Texas law allows for the use of deadly force against a person committing or trying to commit robbery, aggravated robbery, and attempted murder, among other things. Whether the unnamed customer will be charged with a crime for stopping one, however — something Twitter users hotly debated over the weekend — remains to be seen.

This shooting, regardless of legality, is what happens when cities don’t crack down on crime.

Like many other urban, Democrat-controlled hubs, Houston is governed by soft-on-crime politicians and policies that let criminals back onto the streets instead of keeping them behind bars.

Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, Houston was one of many U.S. cities that sought to make fundamental changes to its policing and criminal justice system in the name of so-called racial equity. As a result, Texas’ biggest city is in the middle of a rapid uptick in “brazen break-ins,” stabbings, shootings, road rage fights-turned-fatal, kidnappings, thefts, and other violent crimes.

In 2022 alone, the Houston Police Department reported at least 73,410 thefts, 14,256 burglaries (a weekly average of 325), and 420 homicides (averaging roughly eight per week). Last year’s homicides may have been slightly down from 2021, when law enforcement clocked 433 murders, but are still much higher than in previous years.

The Houston homicide rate is so high right now that the local Crime Stoppers chapter had to cease reading the names of murder victims at its annual “Day of Remembrance.”

Families of Houston murder victims blame the city’s Democrat judges for the “revolving courthouse doors.” Local law enforcement personnel and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott say those same judges played roles in reducing critical funding.

Harris County’s plan to defund law enforcement shows a complete disregard for the safety & security of the Texans they’re sworn to protect.

We’ll always ensure our officers have the resources necessary to keep our communities safe.

Texas defunds cities who defund our police. pic.twitter.com/yGcGgYQ8wF

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) August 23, 2022

Houstonians’ tax dollars are supposed to go to programs and people who give them security. Instead of punishing criminals to the fullest extent of the law, those tax dollars are diverted to so-called “outreach workers and violence