After Houston’s police chief retired amid a dropped case scandal

For months, a police accountability group in Houston has called for the resignation of Police Chief Troy Finner He revealed that thousands of cases have been dropped over the years due to staff shortages, including those involving serious crimes such as sexual assault.

On Wednesday, Mayor John Whitmire announced that Finner was retiring effective immediately, a move that stunned even his harshest critics.

“I was relieved. “The money stopped with him,” said Hai Bui, founder of the activist group We the People Organize. “We are very happy that the boss did the right thing.”

But community activists say Finner’s sudden departure, capping a three-year term as police chief in the country’s fourth-largest city, does not allay concerns about dropped cases. Now groups are demanding continued accountability.

“Now more than ever, we need to make sure we stand up for survivors and make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” said Sonia Corrales, deputy executive director of the Houston Area Women’s Center, which offers emergency shelter, a hotline and programs for people involved in cases of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Whitmire, who took office this year, said the scandal engulfing the department had become “such a distraction” that he accepted Finner’s decision to retire after a 34-year career. Two deputy chiefs were demoted and a third resigned amid an internal investigation, Finner said in April.

“Chief Finner spent so much time dealing with the press and the department,” Whitmire told reporters when he announced his resignation, “that impacted operations at HPD. “That’s the bottom line.”

The “last straw”

While Finner was promoted to police chief in April 2021, the cases in question date back to 2016, when a code — “suspended: shortage of staff,” or “SL” — was used to reject incident reports.

Finner revealed in February that he learned of the SL code in November 2021 and instructed officials at the time to stop using it. He said he found out in February that it was still being applied to sexual assault cases.

The code continued to appear in police policies that were not approved until December 2023, the Houston Chronicle reported in February.

Finner launched an internal review that found about 264,000 incident reports were suspended due to staffing issues since 2016, representing about 10% of all incident reports in the past eight years. While approximately half of these suspended incident reports related to property and financial crimes, the remainder also included allegations of crimes against persons. Finner had said about 4,000 of those were reports related to sex crimes against adults. He warned that some of these incidents were duplicates or mislabeled.

Last month, Finner said the department I was still combing through the reports filed under the “SL” code to see if they had been properly investigated. In total, he saidMore than a third of the reports were viewed and charges were brought against 27 suspects, mostly for administrative offenses, but also for violent crimes. In sexual assault cases, officers attempted to contact everyone who had made a report and set up any appointments 400 follow-up interviews.

On Tuesday, Finner came under scrutiny again local media reported that he was made aware of the use of the “SL” code in an email chain from 2018, which contradicts his statement in February that he learned about it in 2021. Finner, then deputy chief executive, was informed of a road rage case involving the use of this code, and he responded in an email to a police commander: “This is unacceptable, look into it and engage with me.” Connection.”

The existence of the previous email cast doubt on Finner’s timeline. He could not initially be reached for comment on Friday.

Finner Posted on X Before retiring, he had “never tried to mislead anyone,” but he didn’t notice the email at the time because he didn’t know how the term was used internally.

Still, Whitmire told reporters Wednesday, the email was the “final straw.”

“Press the reset button”

Observers say Finner’s departure is just the beginning of an effort to address the Houston Police Department’s ongoing problems.

A key problem remains the staffing of a police force, which has even seen a decline in the number of officers over the years as the city’s population has grown to more than 2.3 million people. As of last November, the department said it had about 5,165 officers, down 81 from 2016, the Houston Landing reported.

Finner said in March the city still had fewer than 5,200 officers and told reporters he wanted “an additional 2,000 officers to properly patrol our streets and conduct investigations in this city.”

But Ray Hunt, executive director of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, said Houston is not alone as it struggles to retain and hire people in a profession that is increasingly under scrutiny.

“You’re one phone call away from being shot,” Hunt said, “and everything you do and say is broadcast on the body camera.”

But that doesn’t mean Houston police shouldn’t do their job and fully investigate cases, he said, particularly those involving violent crimes and threats to public safety.

“Whoever our new leader is must explain that we will never be able to investigate every call,” Hunt said, “but every crime against a person will be responded to – every sexual assault, every murder, every crime.” Robbery we have to react.”Be.”

With department morale suffering due to recent events, he added, “I hope we can hit the reset button.”

But Bui said community activists like himself want to see more transparency from the police department to restore public trust, including how federal grants awarded to the city to hire additional officers were spent.

A spokesman for the Houston Police Department said Friday that a more than $6 million grant received from the Justice Department last November will be used to fund courses in September and November, with each course consisting of 25 recruits.

But Bui questions whether these grants can be properly tracked and managed.

“The community deserves clarity on how every dollar was spent and how many officers were hired, particularly in areas critical to public safety,” he said.

Ultimately, the fallout from the controversy underscores the responsibility to ensure justice is served for victims and survivors of crime, and no agency inaction will hinder that, said Corrales of the Houston Area Women’s Center.

She said there are cases of sexual assault survivors, including those whose incidents were dropped due to staffing shortages, who are now linked to her organization, and that advocates are being brought into the process in a “multidisciplinary effort” so no one is left in the lurch be left open about what happened in her case.

“We have made significant improvements and of course we need to continue to work on them,” Corrales said, “but these companies cannot do it alone.”