Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, is not giving an inch in its war against crime, and as a result, crime has dropped in almost every category.

A sprawling city of more than 1.7 million over 589 square miles, Houston began attacking crime by beefing up its police force in 1992. At the end of last year, 1,300 officers had been added, achieving a goal of 5,200 men and women in blue.A generous overtime budget lets commanders saturate trouble spots with officers and squad cars.

Meantime, cops work from storefronts, bicycles, horseback and in meeting rooms, in the last case forming liaisons with residents, business owners and ministers. They get help from Citizens on Patrol, which has hundreds of people, equipped with citizens band radios, scouting neighborhoods by car for trouble.

Police said they were working smarter, with greater use of computer analysis of crime trends. Patrol areas are being shrunk, and there are efforts to send the same sergeants and officers into locales consistently.

To hear officials tell it, the days of chasing 911 calls are on the wane. Directed patrols mean a proactive approach: crime patterns identified and trouble spots targeted.

Houston has another potent weapon, called "zero-tolerance policing." That has cops sweeping into crime-infested areas for several days, making life miserable for lawbreakers.

During such sweeps, police hammer offenders for every infraction in the book: trespassing, littering, speeding, making U-turns. Such violations let police stop and frisk suspects, leading to arrests for outstanding warrants, weapons confiscations and more people in jail cells.

Police Chief Sam Nuchia, a former federal drug prosecutor, said arrests weren't the point; crime prevention was. Hitting gangs hard and emptying their arsenals mean fewer murders, shootings and assaults, he said.

Nuchia became Houston's top cop in March 1992. He was chosen by Mayor Bob Lanier, who took office after a tough-on-crime campaign.

The two have had help. State lawmakers lengthened the time felons spend in prison before parole. And city officials are mulling a civil lawsuit to tighten the screws further on gangs, which have gaudy names such as "Brown" and "Proud Posse," "White Punks on Dope" and "Playboy Mafia."

"The gangsters down here are mainly into narcotics and weapons," said Officer Abel Vidaurri, 29, of the Gang Task Force. "These same kids who say, `Yes, sir, no, sir' - they'll turn right around and shoot you."

Vidaurri works in north Houston, where the Greenspoint area had been so overrun that a local mall was dubbed "Gunspoint."

Houston experienced fabulous growth during the '70s oil boom, but things went bust early in the '80s.

Donna Crumpler, 45, who manages an office building in Greenspoint, said tumbling oil prices led to a real estate collapse, causing the area's slide. "Greenspoint was almost lost to crime, really and truly," she said.

Crumpler, who sits on neighborhood boards with police captains, believes vigorous policing has made the area much safer. Calling zero-tolerance sweeps "fabulous," she noted, "I wish we had the funds to do them all year long."

Although crime has fallen, it hasn't vanished. Nor has desperation disappeared. In the shadow of the Galleria, Houston's glittering retail quarter not far from former President Bush's home, three mismatched hubcaps shimmer under a Lone Star sun. A tired man hawks them with a sign that said, "I am hungry and homeless."

And Nuchia, 50, acknowledged that he had heard from suburban officials who fear Houston's crackdown merely shoos wrongdoers past city lines. In suburban Pasadena, a gang shootout in an apartment complex one day last month left 16 people injured, including bystanders.

Some believe credit for falling crime rates in Houston lies elsewhere.

Stephen Klineberg, 55, a sociology professor at Rice University in Houston, pointed to two factors: Baby boomers are aging, leaving peak years for committing crime, and Texas has been on a prison-building binge.

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Additionally, a Rice University survey shows fear of crime remains high in Harris County, whose county seat is Houston, Klineberg noted.

Whether Houston keeps a lid on crime remains to be seen. Officials said there was no guarantee that overtime budgets would be lavish forever, and leadership changes are on the horizon in Texas' largest city.

But for now Houston is riding herd on wrongdoers. Nuchia's philosophy hasn't changed since he became a lawman in 1967. "I was a big guy who didn't like bullies," the 6-foot, 4-inch chief said. "And I'm still a big guy who doesn't like bullies."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)

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