Houston’s police chief is retiring after questions about a closed investigation

Houston’s police chief unexpectedly resigned from the force Tuesday night amid questions about a department policy that the mayor’s office said allowed the suspension of hundreds of thousands of cases, including sexual abuse cases. Troy Finner had served as chief of the Houston Police Department “I consider Troy Finner a friend. “It was hard to accept his retirement, but it was in the best interest of Houstonians,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire said in an impromptu conference Wednesday. The resignation announcement came hours after an internal email obtained by CNN affiliate KHOU showed that Finner was referring to the closing of an investigation due to a “staffing shortage” in 2018, three years before he said he was aware of the policy consciously. At the time the email was written, Finner was deputy chief for patrol operations. At a news conference in February, Finner said he didn’t know about the practice until 2021, the year he became chief, when he directed the department’s Special Victims Unit to stop violating the “staffing shortage” code. to be used to suspend investigations. Finner said in April that police had made progress in reviewing about 264,000 investigations that had been suspended since 2016 solely on the grounds of a lack of staff. More than 4,000 of these cases involved allegations of sexual crimes against adults. An independent review committee is also investigating. In a statement issued Tuesday evening after the KHOU report aired, Finner said, “I have always been honest and have never set out to mislead anyone about anything, including this investigation.” The outgoing chief said he honestly knew nothing about the “deferred staffing shortage” codes being used by Houston police at the time, even though it was mentioned in the email. Finner promised in his statement that he would “reach out to the media and the public” once the investigation was complete. The mayor informed the city council of Finner’s resignation later that evening. Larry Satterwhite was named acting police chief by Whitmire on Wednesday. Satterwhite served as executive vice president under Finner. The mayor declined to say whether he had requested Finner’s resignation. “It impacted operations at HPD. That’s the bottom line,” Whitmire told reporters Wednesday. “I took care of it because it was a distraction from the mission of the men and women in HPD.” Finner did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN. As of Wednesday afternoon, the police department had not officially announced the change in leadership.