Houston and Hartford adopt laws to curtail crime at convenience stores

Under a new ordinance designed to combat crime, every convenience store in Houston must install color, digital surveillance cameras, according to news reports. A similar ordinance went into effect this month in Hartford, Conn.

The Houston ordinance was adopted March 26 by the city council. Store operators have 18 months to comply, according to news reports. Some of the other requirements, according to a report by Lee McGuire of KHOU-TV in Houston, are:

• Owners must provide annual safety training to all employees
• Stores must post “no trespassing” and “no loitering” signs on the property, which would allow police to remove vagrant people from parking lots and corners
•Post height strips at exits, which help employees accurately describe suspects after a hold-up
•Install silent panic and holdup alarms
•Install a drop safe, which prevents easy access to large amounts of cash

Failure to comply with the new rules is a class C misdemeanor, which would lead to a $500 fine, according to news reports.

The Houston ordinance grew out of a report issued Aug. 28, 2007, by Mayor Bill White’s Task Force on Convenience Store Security. The 38-member task force consisted of city officials, the Houston Police Department and convenience store owners; it spent eight months researching, meeting and composing the report.

In 2006, Houston police recorded 6,962 incidents at 980 convenience stores or their parking lots, according to the report. Officials said in 2007 that crime at convenience stores had decreased by about 8 percent since 2003.

“The crime trends are positive and downward, but we can't be satisfied,” Mayor White said last year upon the completion of the report. “The Task Force has helped us understand how we can work smarter together to improve on security and cooperation.” (For more on the origin of the Houston ordinance, see the Aug. 31, 2007, and Sept. 10, 2007, editions of NPN MarketPulse, available in the archives at NPNWeb.org.)

The new law in Hartford, which became effective in early March, applies to convenience stores and gas stations open between the hours of 11:30 p.m. and 5 a.m., according to news reports, which noted that such stores must have surveillance cameras, a silent alarm and a drop safe.

Hartford police said they conducted inspections at two stores at around 1 a.m. March 12 and found both stores to be operating without a license that allows them to be open at that hour, according to WTNH-TV, which reported that the stores were subsequently shut down.