By January, the Houston Police Department hopes to have finished reviewing the more than 260,000 cases that were wrongfully suspended over an eight-year span.
Even though there were still potential leads to explore, the cases were put on hold under the “lack of personnel” category without a thorough examination. When the incident was made public in February, it caused a stir inside the department and resulted in HPD Chief Troy Finner’s early departure.
The code was too often utilized to close cases that should have been thoroughly probed, according to HPD Chief Larry Satterwhite’s July statement. During his tenure in public service, Mayor John Whitmire described the incident as one of the most startling things he has ever witnessed.
According to Whitmire, these are not property crimes or auto burglaries. These cases rank among the worst of the worst.
Justice has not been served merely because the review is almost over. The reason for the re-suspension of 68% of the evaluated cases was “no workable leads.” According to Douglas Griffith, president of the HPD Union, those matters have been thoroughly investigated even though they were not resolved.
“That s the difference between what was taking place and what we are doing now, which is we take every single lead, and we run it down on a person-to-person crime rape, robbery, aggravated assault, family violence every single one of those cases have leads of some shape or form, and we re going to investigate those until we run out,” Griffith stated.
Major assaults and family violence cases trailed behind the others in terms of full closure of reviewed cases, with only 22% achieving final disposition. 81% of auto crimes have been completely resolved, compared to 33% of financial and property offenses.
Nearly 100% of cases in all other categories, including those involving drugs and serious criminals, were closed, compared to 96% of special victims cases and 95% of auto theft cases.
According to Griffith, certain cases will still be closed because of a staffing shortage, depending on the priority of the charges.
“Violent offenders are always gonna be pushed to the top,” he stated. “Cases where your car was broken into and there are no leads—we have roughly 2,000 of those per month—will be placed to the bottom. We might not be able to look into every one of such cases. We simply lack the manpower, so regardless of how we resolve it—whether it’s due to a lack of manpower, a lack of evidence, or the complaint’s failure to prosecute—we will still be resolving cases.”
He went on to say that cops cited a shortage of personnel as the issue rather than other causes.
“The problem is they were citing the use of lack of manpower instead of what it should have been lack of evidence, no further leads, lack of response by the complainant,” he stated. “Most people just don t understand that now, in this particular instance here, these cases were all cleared by lack of manpower, when in reality a lot more other things.”
Nearly 2,000 civilian employees and more than 5,200 officers work for the department. In his 2023 campaign, Mayor John Whitmire made law enforcement a top priority and demanded that 2,000 more police officers be hired.
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