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HOUSTON -- All over the country, recruiting new police officers is tough business. In Houston, the policeman’s union claims that HPD is more than 1,000 officers short.

Part of that gap is being made up by budgeted overtime. Or at least it was.

11 News has learned there will be dramatic overtime cuts at the Houston Police Department, and the cuts will start immediately.

It was just eight months ago that Houston Mayor Bill White promised to spend an extra $24 million on police overtime.

That was supposed to pay for 500,000 hours of OT through 2010.

What will the cuts in overtime mean for local communities?

Just ask Woody Nabore.

A wood fence is about the only thing that separates Nabore from the wild west.

"You catch drug deals out in this field. My kids play in this field. So now you got me coming out like John Dillinger with a shotgun on my shoulder,” said Nabore, who lives on Desoto in northwest Houston. “I don't want to live like that."

Things in one of the city's highest crime areas just off Desoto Street were looking up, thanks to the overtime-funded Crime Reduction Initiative patrols working to cut crime.

The programs were announced grandly with the mayor and Police Chief Harold Hurtt saying the overtime was one way to get cops on the streets despite a lack of new officers completing training.

Now, new cutbacks at the end of the budget year are much quieter.

An internal HPD memo says simply "due to budgetary constraints all [Crime Reduction Initiative] funding has been suspended."

In the Desoto neighborhood, that's not what folks wanted to hear.

"Oh, well thank you. I can't tell the mayor thank you for that,” said Nabore, when told of the cutbacks. “Because now that means that we are going to get overrun."

The police union is not far behind in its criticsm.

"Certainly the criminals don't follow the budget year. And they don't care about budget shortfalls,” said Houston Police Officers Union President Gary Blankenship. “They are there to commit crimes.

“Police officers need to be out on the street to stop them," Blankenship said.

HPD would not provide anyone to talk about this issue or answer questions on camera, but they did tell us that it is a "management issue" amounting to about 10 percent of the total overtime budget.

The department says it spends nearly $1 million a week on overtime.

Neighbors on Desoto are spending too. They are funding their own armed patrols and buying their own weapons.

“Now you got everybody in this neighborhood going to get certified to carry handguns to protect themselves,” said Nabore.