Houston’s police chief is retiring amid investigations into thousands of dismissed rape cases

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner has retired as investigations continue into more than 260,000 incidents, including more than 4,000 sexual assault cases, that went uninvestigated since 2016.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire announced Finner’s resignation on Wednesday, emphasizing that the former police chief was not forced to leave the force but that the investigation appeared to be interfering with the police department’s work.

“The current suspended case investigation had become such a distraction that I believed the department had lost its focus on hotspot management and response times,” Whitmire said. “I could go through a list of things that I think have been paused because of the time spent and new revelations in this investigation.”

All of the approximately 264,000 incident reports were marked “suspended – staff shortage,” and the mayor had previously expressed his confidence in Finner.

Whitmire said recent news reports detailing an email Finner received and responded to in 2018 about a road rage incident in which the blocked code was used were the “final straw.” It emerged Finner was aware of the code before November 2021, when he said he learned about it and ordered officers to stop using the code.

Finner responded to the reports by saying he had “never attempted to mislead anyone in any way” and “had no recollection of doing so.”

“While this 2018 email included the phrase ‘persistent staffing shortage’, there is nothing that alerted me to its existence as a code or the manner in which it was applied within the department.” he said in a statement.

Finner went on record in a post