Hard evidence ignored in "suspended" cases- What's Your Point?
HOUSTON - Just when we were beginning to hope the Houston Police Department's case-spiking scandal was slowly easing into healing, a new and ugly disclosure made it substantially worse.
I’m speaking of the revelation that in at least 95 cases of alleged rape - HPD had at its disposal undeniable DNA evidence placing identifiable perpetrators in contact with victims.
How do we know? Because the suspects had committed crimes in the past and their DNA was in the national database.
So - what did HPD do with this "rock solid", undeniable scientific evidence? Nothing....
Instead of arresting and interrogating the suspect, they simply killed the investigation.
City Council member Julian Ramirez says, "It's a failure of the highest order to have this information that you can act upon to make our community safer and nothing is being done with it."
To Chief Finner’s credit, all the spiked sexual assault cases have been re-opened....but as you can tell from my reaction... this level of dereliction is inexcusable, regardless of the proposed staffing shortage.