Mayor Whitmire wants some answers.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire on Wednesday called for an independent investigation into the Houston Police Department over how and why more than 264,000 cases were declared suspended for lack of personnel.
“I trust and believe Police Chief Troy Finner is doing the best he can to manage the internal investigation, get to the bottom of it and hold people accountable,” Whitmire said in a statement. “The independent panel will be people I also trust to review and validate the outcome and help bring closure to the victims.”
Whitmire’s call for a third party to investigate the police department was acknowledged by police chief Troy Finner, who said he welcomed and supported the review in a post on X.
“The mayor and I have spoken almost daily about this matter and I appreciate his continued support of HPD and my administration,” Finner’s statment read.
Finner called the review a “vital part of the transparency and accountability” into the scandal.
Whitmire’s statement said he will release the names of people who agreed to serve on the review panel in coming days.
[…]
In previous public comments about the suspended cases, Whitmire has blamed problems on previous administrations, but called Finner a good chief who could “be better.”
“I am deeply concerned about how and why this happened. The public wants answers and accountability. This process of appointing an independent panel will validate the investigation’s integrity,” Whitmire said Wednesday.
The police department also announced it would host a news conference Thursday to provide another update on police department’s internal review of the suspended cases and its efforts to contact victims.
See here for some background. I don’t see another story on the Chron about that news conference and update, but it looks like video from it is here. I’m going to wait and see what this investigation uncovers before getting too deep into this, but two points to note. One, in this earlier story that says the use of this code actually goes all the way back to 2014 and was known about at the time, we have this:
Charles McClelland, then Houston’s police chief, said in 2014 that he wasn’t surprised at the findings and they weren’t unique to Houston. He presented the city with a plan to hire hundreds of more officers and asked for $105 million to do it.
HPD Chiefs have been calling for the hiring of more officers for more or less ever, so that this was then-Chief McClelland’s proposed answer is not a surprise. Whether it might have helped or not is something we’ll never know, but I will leave it to the reader to work out what effect an extra expenditure of at least $105 million a year (it will presumably go up as salaries and other costs rise) would have on our current budget situation.
And two, there’s this.
Gov. Greg Abbott is calling for the state to impose “consequences” for the 264,000 cases Houston police have dropped since 2016 due to a lack of personnel.
“250,000 crime victims in Houston never even had their crime investigated. That includes thousands of sexual assault victims,” Abbott wrote on X on Thursday. “The state must impose consequences for this neglect & provide solutions to prevent acts like this that allow criminals to go free.”
Not “how can we help”, just straight to “someone’s gonna pay for this”. Typical. Maybe this isn’t the threat that I’m reading it as, but that’s Mayor Whitmire’s problem. He says his ability to work with the state leadership is an asset. At this point, what we need more than anything is damage control. I hope for the best.
This underscores how uselss our past two mayors were to have this happen. The city is supposed to do two things 1) keep the public safe and 2) keeps the roads/infrastructure working.
Is there any evidence that these mayors knew about HPD’s coding scheme?
Coming up on 15 yrs that I ran for city council, where does the time go?
Police staffing and cadet classes was one of my top bullet points. I suggested retired military and retired police officers to work for community patrols and taking reports for robberies, car accidents, and other administrative work, at a lesser pay than a full time police officer and in a marked lesser equipped patrol car…. some Sheriff offices in Fl do this.
Also suggested merging constable, ranger, and DPS duties to consolidate duplicate hierarchy….
When I ran , I researched the previous 20 yrs…..all the same problems still no solutions then or now, Same problems, drainage and flooding, another bullet point everyone forgets about until the next flood, smh
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