Houston – When the “Katricians” rise up in violence, Houstonians had better be packing some serious heat.
That’s the inflammatory message of a gun-shop commercial on the radio that gives Hurricane Katrina evacuees a vaguely alien-sounding name and advises Texans to take up arms to defend themselves against crimes committed by the newcomers.
“When the ‘Katricians’ themselves are quoted as saying the crime rate is gonna go up if they don’t get more free rent, then it’s time to get your concealed-handgun license,” warns the radio ad by Jim Pruett, who co-hosts a talk-radio show and owns Jim Pruett’s Guns & Ammo, a self- styled “anti-terrorist headquarters” that sells knives, shotguns, semiautomatic rifles and other weapons. As Pruett describes the dangers posed by “Katricians,” glass can be heard shattering and a bell tolling ominously.
The radio spot highlights what many gun-store owners say is a trend in Houston: trade in weapons amid a surge in the homicide rate that police attribute to the more than 100,000 hurricane evacuees still in the city. Although the gun-sale reports are largely anecdotal, Texas officials said applications for concealed- weapons permits were up statewide: 60,328 from Jan. 1 to Sept. 1 this year, compared with 46,298 for the same period last year.
The Houston Police Department estimates that one in five homicides in the city now involves Katrina evacuees – as suspect, victim or both. Many Houston residents, including some evacuees, are worried that crime will only get worse once housing and other public assistance end.
Parnell “Herb” Herbert, a spoken-word artist and community organizer from New Orleans who wound up in Houston after the hurricane, said he chafed at being called a Katrina evacuee because he believed the label had taken on a negative connotation in the media and did not describe who he was.
“I am not a Katrina evacuee; I am a New Orleanian living in Houston. I am a father, a grandfather, a Vietnam vet,” he said.
This month, Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, a humorist and musician running a populist campaign, joined the chorus of anti-evacuee sentiment.
“The musicians and artists have mostly moved back to New Orleans now,” Friedman said. “The crackheads and the thugs have decided to stay here. They want to stay here. I think they got their hustle on, and we need to get ours.”
He later clarified he was not calling all evacuees in Texas crackheads and thugs, and his campaign disclosed that the independent candidate had been housing a musician friend from New Orleans. Nonetheless, evacuees and activists accused him of pandering to voters’ racial prejudice.
