Posted on 05/15/2024 7:46:57 AM PDT by george76
The nation's fourth-largest city has a big problem when it comes to conducting criminal investigations. It's getting worse.
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner resigned last week. There is no way he could have remained in his position after the scandal of 260,000 incident reports labeled “Suspended — Lack of Personnel”, or SL were discovered. Two assistant chiefs have been demoted and one executive has resigned. The new mayor, John Whitmire, has a real disaster on his hands. Whitmire said that the “dumb person that came up with that code” is no longer at HPD.
Advertisement I don't care what the code is. I just want my city's police department to be properly staffed and solve the damn crimes. The shortage of personnel has been going on for years and only got worse during the Summer of Love in 2020 when defunding the police was all the rage. Protests turned into riots and police had targets on their backs. It was not as bad in Houston as it was in other cities but Houston didn't avoid the chaos. The then-mayor joined in the marches and openly supported the Marxist leaders of BLM who came and rallied in the city.
The failure is not just the fault of the police chief, though the buck stops with him, but the whole system has failed.
...
An investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that HPD shelved investigations into 'minor' crimes because of a lack of staff. It's been going on for decades. There were burglary and theft cases that were suspended because there were no detectives free to run down leads. Imagine being a victim of one of those crimes and learning that there were leads in your case but no one had time to work them.
By 2014, HPD's planning office talked about creating the Suspended-Lack of Personnel code for violent crimes, too. The situation kept escalating and going downhill.
The chief at that time said he wasn't a part of the discussion about the SL code. He said he would not have approved it.
The chief at that time said he wasn’t looped in on discussions about this “SL” code, and said he would not have approved it, stressing that every serious crime should be assigned to a detective for at least some follow-up. HPD brass wasn't required to sign off when the code was added to the department's computer system in 2016. No one was put in charge of ensuring the code was used consistently by investigators. Experienced leaders in the department who could have been put in charge of the implementation left HPD that year when a push for pension reform created mass retirements of the command staff.
The new system with the SL code was not set up to succeed from the beginning. It was doomed to failure because the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.
A large portion of the cases were mislabeled. Tens of thousands of investigations were improperly dropped. Finner said those cases included some "egregious" crimes.
Finner became police chief in 2021 after a 34-year career with HPD.
The backlog of processing rape kits and forensic testing in assault cases is particularly disturbing. "In dozens of cases, forensic testing shows suspects who were allowed to walk free may have later struck again."
Houston residents deserve much better.
In November 2021, Finner said he ordered his command staff to stop using the SL code. The day after that, the crisis of the Astroworld tragedy happened. The system remained in place.
So, what is next? Mayor Whitmire appointed Larry Satterwhite, formerly the executive assistant chief, as acting police chief while he begins the search for Finner’s replacement. Whitmire said, “It’s real premature to talk about the process of selection. I’m not ruling out an internal or external chief. I want someone that is a crime fighter that realizes and appreciates the diversity of our city and just wants to fix things.”
That would be good. I'm not sure what "appreciates diversity" has to do with investigating criminal cases, but let's hope he makes a solid decision soon. Whitmire ran on law and order. He's been in office since January. He has his work cut out for him.
Guessing that hes BLACK....shocked hes not a black woman.
This is why there is no honest way to claim crime is down.
Houston is not the only city.
NYC was known for pressure from on high in the department to downgrade how crimes are entered in the system. Not felony assault but a misdemeanor, not breaking and entering but theft.
Theft—NOT car hijacking...
Not to mention all the “crimes” that go un-prosecuted, like most of them in Blue cities with Soros DA’s.
This is quite the effective way to reduce the number of Blacks in jails by not actually fixing the underlying issue.
In Memphis they are revising last years numbers up in order to show a decline YTD in 2024. New mayor. New police chief. New Superintendent of schools. The trilogy of leadership from a thug factory, living large on the thugs they churn out by design.
As soon as I read the headline I played “Guess the Race of the Perp”
Right again!
Easy peasy!
Demonicrat-controlled Houston also had a problem with its previous Chief of Police, Art Acevado (November 30, 2016 – April 4, 2021).
Yep, the usual suspect.
Who would have dreamed it?
My understanding is that metro Houston has become almost as politically Hard Left as Austin and Travis County.
Seattle had a completely incompetent Black female Police Chief who was forced to resign about four years ago.
I can't remember why - the BLM-George Floyd chaos maybe?
Undaunted, our City Council immediately appointed a Brown skinned Hispanic male to replace her.
Did I forget to mention that Seattle is almost 80% white and Asian?
This is not the first incompetent black, male CoP Houston has had.
As far as Houston now becoming as far left as Austin...I think there’s been a whole lotta gerrymandering (Sheila Jaaaahhhx Lee, cough, cough) and machine malfunctions (as in lost in a storage room, etc), goin’ on.
try submitting a police report in the City of St. Louis! It’s easier to cancel your cell phone account!
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