Troy Finner has stepped down as chief of the Houston Police Department, Mayor John Whitmire announced in a late-night, four-paragraph email to city employees Tuesday.
“I have accepted the retirement of Troy Finner as Chief of Police, and have appointed Larry Satterwhite acting Chief of Police effective 10:31 p.m. tonight,” Whitmire wrote. “This decision comes with full confidence in acting Chief Satterwhite’s abilities to lead and uphold the high standards of the department.”
Finner’s sudden retirement comes amid the monthslong internal police investigation into the department’s use of a internal code — “SL” — to mark criminal cases and incident reports as suspended due to a lack of personnel.
Finner announced the investigation into the internal code in February and has delivered periodic updates on the investigation and reviews of the suspended cases as it progressed. Last week, Finner announced that the internal investigation had concluded, but the police department had yet to release any information on its findings.
Similarly, an independent investigative group organized by Whitmire to conduct its own review of the police department has yet to make any disclosures about its findings.
On Tuesday, multiple Houston TV stations reported a new development in the scandal: an email written by Finner in 2018 referring to the suspended case issue. Finner had previously said that he first became aware of the code in 2021.
In a statement posted by the department on X at 6:02 p.m., Finner said he didn’t remember sending the older email and appeared to dismiss its significance.
The linked article on the “new development” shows one email about the “SL” code, to which Finner replies that it’s unacceptable and the emailer should look into it. There may be more than this, but this by itself doesn’t strike me as anything earth-shaking. It’s one email, not a long chain, and Finner directed someone else to take action, he didn’t promise any action on his part. If the issue here is that he said he first heard of this in 2021 and this is a contradiction of that, I can understand why he might have forgotten about it. But again, there may be more than just this, so I’ll hold off on further comment for now.
Now-former Chief Finner still has a lot of support on Council, which perhaps puts a little pressure on his interim and future successors. I don’t have a strong opinion on Finner other than to note that he was a definite improvement on Art Acevedo. I still want to see what that internal report says and what the Mayoral committee finds. I hope Finner isn’t getting out ahead of some other show dropping, and (modulo that) I wish him well in whatever comes next. Houston Landing has more.
As soon as this story broke, it was clear that heads were going to roll at some point.
What I do find amazing is the claim, after 260,000 incidents were internally shit-canned, that the Dept/Finner specifically, now claims that progress has been made ‘reviewing 264,000’ investigations. One, that’s 4,000 more than initially reported, and two, how the F has HPD made ANY dent in those cases inside of three months ? I don’t doubt they tossed ‘my cat is missing’ (those should be relegated to NextDoor posts where they belong), ‘someone hit my car with a shopping cart in the Home Depot parking lot’ and ‘I left my phone on a Metro bus’ reports…permanent like, but the majority were prob cases that really should have been correctly investigated.
Whitemire lining up the interviews for new chief:
1) Sheriff Joe Arpaio
2 ) Bull Connor III
3) Derek Chauvin
After our home was burgled in Feb 2023 there was never a detective assigned. I called regularly for months. I get it – it was a property crime, no one was hurt. But the crime scene was terrible, we had to do significant repairs to our home, we lost many valuables and personal documents like passports. My clothing was deliberately slashed.
The thieves left DNA and I’m sure fingerprints all over the scene.
It was so disappointing to be so disregarded. I think that was one of the worst parts about the whole drama.
Not shocked at all. As bad as the failure to investigate all these cases was, even the appearance of a coverup is always going to be the last straw. I hope they can find a good replacement.
My sympathies to Karen, that’s a disgusting violation and HPD dropping the ball is just salt in the wound.
I’m not surprised that Chief Finner left when he did, though not because of this issue (and it should not be diminished). New mayors often hire their own hand-picked chief shortly after their elections, so his remaining career as chief was likely going to be up within a year anyway.
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