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Houston Police Department release final report on suspended case investigation

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Published  July 31, 2024 4:15pm CDT
Houston Police Department
FOX 26 Houston

HPD presents full report on suspended cases scandal

FOX 26 Reporter Abigail Dye has more on what the report stated.

HOUSTON - We have more details about how and why the Houston Police Department (HPD) started using the controversial code that left thousands of crimes ignored, uninvestigated and labeled "suspended due to lack of staffing."

For nearly three hours, HPD Acting Chief Larry Satterwhite gave Houston City Council members and the mayor a detailed account of what's in the now complete report from the mayor's independent oversight board and Satterwhite answered questions regarding HPD cases that were suspended and coded "SL" or suspended due to lack of staffing.

Satterwhite says the code was first created in 2016 to identify why non-violent crimes were being suspended with the intent of going back to review them once the staffing shortage was addressed.

RELATED: Panel makes recommendations for HPD reform following suspended case scandal

According to Satterwhite, Chief Charles McClelland was heading the department and retired in February 2016 when, then, Executive Assistant Chief Tim Oettmeier and Assistant Chief Donald McKinney came up with the code. Satterwhite says the policy was signed by acting Chief Martha Montalvo and the code was used for first time in March 2016 when there was a significant backlog and the department was short-staffed.

"We are severely short-staffed. In 1998, the Houston Police Department had 5,500 officers and 2,000 civilians. Today, we have 300 fewer classified officers. We have 1,100 fewer civilians," says Chief Satterwhite and he adds, "I will say our first major failing was that there were no parameters or guidelines established when the code was established. I think there was an expectation that surely you would never use it for certain cases. Unfortunately, it was. It ended up being used in cases that we should never have used it for."

Houston mayor, HPD report on suspended code

Mayor John Whitmire and Houston Police Acting Chief Larry Satterwhite discuss the final report on the suspended cases and inactive "Suspended – Lack of Personnel" code.

"I just want to emphasize the seriousness of this. This is not car break-ins or property crimes. These are some of the worst of the worst cases," Houston Mayor John Whitmire clarified with the chief, and he answered "Yes, sir."

In fact, Chief Satterwhite says it was an egregious case that brought light to the massive problem of HPD cases being suspended due to lack of personnel. In that crime, a Fiesta grocery was robbed in 2023. The robber rode away on his bike, broke into a family's home, tied up the husband and sexually assaulted the wife. The criminal's DNA came back to the same attacker in a case that had been suspended due to lack of staffing.

HPD says over 260,000 criminal cases were suspended due to 'lack of personnel' over 8 years

"A prior sexual assault that occurred almost one year earlier, to the day in 2022, in September and in that case, we had a complainant who felt like she had been sexually assaulted after staying with a friend," Satterwhite explained to city council members. "At that time the question across everybody was how could this happen? What's going on and how bad is it? This was the end of last year. So, we did a deep dive. Over the course of the next month and a half we discovered over 4,000 sexual assault cases in the Special Victims Division that had been suspended lack of personnel and we discovered overall throughout the department 264,000 cases that had been suspended lack of personnel," Satterwhite said.

In the 43-page report, HPD recognized the issue and identified the problem of using the SL code to label cases and prevent them from being investigated.

You can read the full report below.

"This was a systemic failure in many ways," says Councilmember Edward Pollard.

"This was a horrible situation at HPD but the underlying issue is lack of staffing, and we have known this now for 10 years," says Councilmember Sallie Alcorn.

In fact, Satterwhite included HPD Chief McClelland in a video slideshow Satterwhite presented to council from 2014 when McClelland was informing city council members of the problems staffing shortages were creating and asking for more money for more workers.

Houston Police Department suspension of rape investigations despite DNA evidence drawing fire

"I've been with the Houston Police Department over 37 years. There's never been a time I have been employed that the HPD has the capacity to investigate every crime reported to the agency," McClelland said in the video that was played.

On Aug. 21, the City of Houston released an independent review of the Houston Police Deparment's use of the suspended code.

The review also looks at the issues that have contributed to the suspended lack of personnel code scandal.

You can read the full review below:

"The number of non-investigated cases isn't new. In 2014, Chief McClelland said 20,000. So, it wasn't like they didn't know. People knew," says Councilmember Willie Davis.    

"We are severely understaffed and that is going to be the base cause of how this happened. It doesn't excuse it. What happened in our department is inexcusable," says Satterwhite. The acting chief says lack of funding, mass retiring and difficulty recruiting officers after George Floyd's murder are all contributing to HPD's staffing shortage, as well as other department's paying higher salaries.

HPD suspended reports scandal: List of suspects charged, arrested

Mayor Whitmire says the city will come up with resources to get HPD funding for more officers and investigators.

Satterwhite says some policies that have been put in place to keep this from ever happening again, include now no case will be closed without several people from several levels reviewing it first.

HPD has spent nearly $3 million in overtime reviewing the previously suspended cases, which include two homicides. One person was intentionally run over, another died in an accident when a narcotics suspect was fleeing, driving away, wrecked and killed his passenger.

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Most of the cases have now been reviewed, leading to dozens of felony arrests and misdemeanors.

FOX 26 has been covering the suspended case investigation since February. You can see more related articles here: