Houston Republic

As director of Victim Services and Advocacy for Crime Stoppers of Houston, Andy Kahan has had enough of all the violent crimes being committed in Harris County.

“The bottom line is we’re in a Harris County bond pandemic and people are paying the price for felony bond reform,” Kahan said. “I started compiling a list a little over a year ago of victims who’ve been murdered by defendants released on multiple felony bonds. Right now, there are 110 people murdered by people in those categories in Harris County since 2018.

Kahan is now using that data to push for legislation aimed at combatting the problem of those on felony bond being accused of committing serious crimes.

“The majority of those occurred in 2020-21,” he said of the 110 killings. “Every day, I sadly add more people to that list. My criteria for being on the list is you had to be out on more than one felony bond. If you were out on one felony bond and got charged with murder you didn’t make the list.”

Kahan isn’t alone in stressing that something needs to change. Senate Bill 21, which has the support of the Republican senate in Texas, seeks to make it more difficult for people previously accused of violent offenses to be released on bond.

While critics of the measure stress it unfairly punishes indigent defendants, Kahan argues something has to be done to turn the trend around.

“I’m just looking at murder,” he said. “God only knows what the other categories are. We’ve been up there pushing legislation on this.”