Retired Texas Cop Killed After Violent Gunfight With Neighbor

Mart Hanna, a retired Texas police officer, met with an untimely death on Tuesday after she was fatally shot by a neighbor amid a heated altercation. Kerr County deputies were alerted about the scuffle that occurred at a gated subdivision in Kerrville after gunfire triggered panic among residents.

Upon their arrival, officers discovered Hanna’s body lying in a pool of blood as a result of being greviously wounded. Soon after, retired U.S. Customs officer Kenneth Brown, 71, was zeroed in as the shooter but no arrests have been made as yet. Brown didn’t get injured during the altercation. On the other hand, further probe, with the assistance of Texas Rangers, is underway.

Homicides are on the rise in Texas, with over 353 similar cases having been logged in since November 2020. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, during a press conference, rued that the uptick in cases could be attributed to various reasons – being short-staffed and the like.

“We're trying to focus on violent crime, and it's a balance,” said Acevedo at the conference. “We have a department that has the basically the same number of officers that it had 20 years ago with a significant decrease in overtime and a significant approach to criminal justice by the rest of the criminal justice system,” he added.

The police force has been in the eye of the storm for a long time, with critics calling for defunding the police after several instances of systematic racism in the police culture surfaced in recent times. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott outrightly expressed his disapproval of the concept and introduced the “Back the Blue pledge” in a bit to combat the move of slashing the budgets of police forces.

Abbott reportedly maintained that the area which allows their police departments to be defunded is “disgraceful and they are reckless. It invites crimes into our communities and it endangers law enforcement officers and their families.”

The city of Austin voted in August to slash the police budget by one-third. Some of the allotted funds were expected to be directed into public programs. Classes for new cadets were also called off due to budget cuts. Abbott slammed the move earlier this month and suggested that he was considering a proposal to have portions of Austin policed by the state.

“What I think we need to do is have a Capitol zone area that the state will be in charge of policing,” said Abbott said during a remote town hall, as per a media outlet, adding, “and we can use the city of Austin police officers for this.”