The Houston Police Department is amping up their presence after a string of burglaries at two Vietnamese Buddhist temples on the southwest side have left the community and resident female monks grappling with fear and fading security. The Huong Nghiem Temple and the Cam Lo Temple, located just 3.5 miles apart, were targeted within hours of each other last weekend, with disastrous intrusions that left living quarters ransacked and valuables stolen.
According to ABC13, Nguyen Dat Thich, overseer of the Huong Nghiem Temple, described the havoc as akin to a "war zone," after the female monks found their sanctuary desecrated, the doors kicked in, and the assailants taking off with hundreds in cash—and all this while the outside gate remained secured, multiple cars parked plainly in the driveway, the sacred space breached through a neighbor's compromised barrier. Miles away at the Cam Lo Temple, the intrusion was mirrored; as worshipers prayed nearby, burglars plundered through windows for cash donation boxes, this being the temple's second such violation in two months.
Thuy Le, an advocate for the Thanh Long Tu Temple, has been actively documenting these and related incidents, citing a concerning potential total of 12 to 15 burglaries and attacks in and around Houston that appear to target Buddhist places of worship. The issue is compounded by a daunting language barrier, which has hindered effective reporting and communication between the Vietnamese community and the authorities.
In a dialogue fraught with frustration and fear, "you have my commitment: We will be working diligently to identify, and the goal is to apprehend a suspect," promised Houston Police Department Executive Assistant Chief Ban Tien at a community meeting, a declaration reported by the Houston Chronicle, as the department reiterated the scarcity of officers patrolling every moment at the temples is a harsh reality of their resource limitations, this admission coming months after an attack that saw a Molotov cocktail flung through a temple's window illuminating the specter of escalating hostility.
Local authorities have been rallied to address the surge in temple burglaries, with FBI Houston and other federal agencies stepping in, and offers of rewards posed for information leading to arrests. The HPD, recognizing the patterns in these cases, insists that while they see no immediate evidence suggesting hate crimes, the increasing patrols in the region are a direct response to safeguarding these religious institutions. Commander Reece Hardy from the Westside Division told ABC13, "We're always sensitive to those religious institutions, we want to make sure that they feel safe, especially out here in Westside."
