Houston Mayor Says Police Chief Is Absent Amid Investigation into Thousands of Dropped Cases

By KEN MILLER and JUAN A. LOZANO

HOUSTON (AP) — Houston’s mayor replaced the city’s police chief, saying Wednesday it was the best thing for a law enforcement agency that still faces intense scrutiny reasons why hundreds of thousands of cases have never been investigated, including more than 4,000 allegations of sexual assault.

Mayor John Whitmire said he did not force out former Police Chief Troy Finner, but accepted his retirement because the police department needed to move forward under new leadership.

At a news conference, Whitmire said the ongoing investigation and questions about what Finner knew and when had a cumulative impact “on the morale of the department, the focus of officers and the trust that Houstonians must have in their police department.

Whitmire, who took office in January, had expressed confidence in Finner after the chief revealed in February that more than 264,000 incident reports over the past eight years had never been investigated, the agents having assigned them an internal code indicating a lack of available staff.

Finner had said he ordered his command staff in a meeting in November 2021 to stop using it after learning of its existence. Despite this, he said, he learned on February 7 of this year that this system was still being used to close a significant number of adult sexual assault cases.

Whitmire’s trust in Finner appeared to quickly end this week after Houston television stations reported Tuesday that Finner was informed of the discarded incident reports in a 2018 email.

Whitmire called the discovery of the email “the final straw.”

“Ultimately, the department is distracted by investigative issues … from its primary mission, which is to fight crime,” Whitmire told city council members. He named Deputy Chief Larry Satterwhite as interim chief.

In an article published Wednesday afternoon on the social platform X, Finner did not address his sudden retirement. He called the final months of his career “the most difficult” and “painful” because “some victims of violent crime did not receive the quality care and services they deserved.”

“But it was beneficial because we implemented measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” Finner said on the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Our department and our profession will be better off because of it.”

At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, reporters asked Satterwhite when he first learned that cases were being rejected due to lack of staff.

Satterwhite, who has been with the police department for 34 years, said he briefly attended the November 2021 meeting in which Finner told his staff to stop using the code, but that he had left because he was concentrating on other tasks. Satterwhite said that in late 2023 or early this year he might have heard about the code related to a specific case, but it wasn’t until later that he became aware of the magnitude of the problem.

“As an agency, we failed on this,” Satterwhite said.

Satterwhite said becoming interim chief has been difficult under the circumstances because he and Finner are longtime friends and attended the police academy together.

“I’m going to do my best to make things better and then we’ll see,” Satterwhite said.

Finner apologized in March for using the internal code to dismiss incident reports and said he would be transparent and honest in the ongoing investigation.

Regarding the 2018 email made public this week, Finner released a statement to X saying he didn’t remember the email until he was shown a copy on Tuesday.

“Even though the phrase ‘suspended staff shortage’ appeared in the 2018 email, nothing alerted me to its existence as a code or how it was being enforced within the department,” she said. writes Finner.

On Wednesday, several City Council members expressed gratitude to Finner, who joined the Houston Police Department in 1990 and became chief in 2021. City Councilwoman Carolyn Evans-Shabazz said she already misses him.

“His efforts contributed significantly to the safety and well-being of our community,” Evans-Shabazz said.

After Finner publicized the department’s use of the internal code to dismiss these cases, Whitmire launched a review by an independent committee. Whitmire said he hoped the panel could provide a public update next week.

The Houston Area Women’s Center, Houston’s largest nonprofit supporting victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, declined to comment Wednesday on Finner’s retirement. But in a social media post in February, the organization said sexual assault survivors “pay a high price” when investigations are not clearly resolved.

Police departments across the country are facing an urgent staffing crisis as many younger officers resign and older officers retire, according to a report released in August by the Police Executive Research Forum. Applications to fill vacancies have fallen amid a national reckoning over how police respond to minorities.

An April 27 report from the same Washington-based think tank found more encouraging numbers.

“Small and medium agencies now have more sworn officers than in January 2020,” according to the forum report. “In large agencies, sworn staff increased slightly during 2023, but they remain more than 5% lower than they were in January 2020.”

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Miller reported from Oklahoma City.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70