The Houston Police Department is devising a plan to target high crime areas. A plan so new it does not even have a name yet.

The operation would involve highly trained tactical units operating in neighborhoods where gangs, drugs and violent crime are out of control.

Sources told 11 News HPD command staff is seriously discussing and perhaps close to forming a citywide Tactical Response Unit.

Similar units are already in use by police forces in other parts of the country.

The unit would go into certain areas or neighborhoods to defuse crime hot spots.

The idea is to put more experienced and trained officers on one specific problem and once the problem is downgraded, the unit would move on to the next crime challenge.

In Dallas, the police department there has what's called Operation Disruption. The Los Angeles police department has a similar squad known as the Metropolitan Unit and in San Antonio, it is simply known as the T.R.U. or the tactical response unit.

The Alamo City police department started its TRU program last year and has had success.

In January thru May 18 of this year, the unit arrested 3,707 people. Of those 1,400 of those were felony arrests.

There were 478 gang members arrested and the unit in the first four and a half months confiscated 346 guns.

Currently HPD has tactical units at every substation. But they work separately, not together.

Near downtown and Montrose for example, the central tactical unit tackles prostitution and criminals that break into vehicles.

On the city's southeast side, the unit mainly focuses on drugs and illegal guns.

Just how many men and women would be in this new citywide tactical unit, how many would be undercover and what they would drive are all questions that are seriously being discussed at HPD headquarters.