HPD says over 260,000 criminal cases were suspended due to 'lack of personnel' over 8 years
HOUSTON - Houston Police Chief Troy Finner has released some new information regarding criminal cases that were suspended.
Last week, Finner identified 4,017 cases of alleged sexual assault administratively suspended for "lack of personnel" - investigations essentially kicked to the curb back to 2016.
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"Am I proud about this? No, I'm angry, okay, because I know we are better, and we are going to make it right, and we will make it right. We are still short of staff and some people say 2,000 officers, so we do the best that we can do, but that's not good enough when we are not investigating sexual assaults," said Finner.
On Monday afternoon, Houston police released a new statement saying,
"Our review of adult sex crime cases suspended with a code of "lack of personnel" has expanded to include all other divisions in the department found to be using that same code. We have determined that department-wide approximately 264,000 such incident reports since 2016 were suspended with this code. That figure represents about 10% of the 2.8 million incident reports filed with HPD in the past eight years. Of those 264,000 reports, about 100,000 of them are property crimes. Our efforts to review sexual assault incident reports and contact potential victims continue. We are also moving additional personnel to other investigative divisions to address these incident reports involving crimes against persons."
Last week, Finner said he first became aware sexual assault cases were being suspended for lack of manpower in 2021 and ordered the practice stopped. He says an internal investigation is underway to determine why that explicit command was disobeyed.
Finner said that he will be holding a news briefing later in the week to provide additional details.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire said in a statement to FOX 26 saying, "I am very concerned. It is unacceptable and I have instructed Chief Finner to be transparent and continue his review as a top priority. Public safety continues to be my highest priority."