 For several months leading into August 2007, the East End Chamber of Commerce Crime Awareness Committee argued that the Houston Police Department assigned insufficient police officers in the area.In 1997, Lori Rodriguez of the "Houston Chronicle" said "In the lifetime of some coalition members, the East End has gone from being mainly white to mainly Hispanic, mainly affluent to mainly modest, mainly thriving to mainly struggling," and that "a younger and more aggressive leadership is trying to revitalize the area and, to a touchingly discernible degree, it has succeeded.