That email was the final straw.
After months of controversy surrounding the Houston Police Department’s practice of suspending cases due to short staffing, the revelation Tuesday that Chief Troy Finner was on an email discussing one such case in 2018 was the “final straw”, Mayor John Whitmire said.
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Whitmire said the most important factor in the shakeup was the effect the ongoing controversy has had on rank-and-file officers.
“It had become… disruptive to the department,” Whitmire said. “I talked to many officers at every level of the department; this had become the dominant focus of so much of HPD’s staff.”
During Wednesday’s City Council discussions about efforts to combat hot spots of criminal activities, Whitmire said HPD’s investigation into suspended cases, which the email concerning Finner has recently complicated, continues to get in the way of the department focusing on its main duty – fighting crime.
“Part of the consideration is that the current investigation and suspended cases had become such a distraction that I was convinced that the department had lost some of its focus to address hot spots and response time,” Whitmire said.
The department announced last week that it had finished the internal investigation and would release its findings soon.
However, a new letter involving Executive Assistant Chief Chandra Hatcher forced the department to reopen the investigation last week, Whitmire said. KPRC reported that Hatcher, a member of Finner’s inner circle, initially requested the department launch its investigation, citing information from a command meeting she said she attended in 2021. Documents obtained by the station raised doubt that Hatcher was at that meeting.
Whitmire said the Hatcher letter and the Finner email, taken together, created major setbacks for the department that eventually led to Finner’s retirement.
See here for the background. I haven’t followed every in and out of this story so I’m not familiar with the Assistant Chief Hatcher situation. I said in the previous entry that I didn’t think the email revelation needed to be “I think it’s time you leave” moment, but it’s perfectly reasonable that it was, especially in conjunction with that. I care more about what the Mayor’s committee learns about this whole thing, and I care even more about better oversight of HPD, including better metrics on their clearance rates. If we don’t get that out of all this, then we’ve wasted our time.
Meanwhile, the Chron editorial board has a few parting words.
Finner’s failure to [build trust within the community] muddies his otherwise strong legacy and has now brought an early end to his 34-year HPD career. For a time, it looked as though Finner, who was widely liked and respected among leaders and rank and file alike, might survive the Houston Police Department’s mushrooming scandal involving homicides, rapes and other cases that went uninvestigated for years.
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When Mayor Sylvester Turner tapped Finner to take over for Acevedo, he already had inherited a department under the microscope for strained police-community relations. There was the botched, no-knock drug raid stemming from a fake 911 call in 2019 that ended with residents Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle dead and a rogue police officer charged with murder. Then there was the murder of George Floyd — a former Houston resident — at the hands of police officers in Minnesota, that compounded the calls for police reform.
Finner was tasked with accomplishing what Acevedo failed to do — not just talking a good game on improving police accountability, but actually implementing significant changes. Finner, a native Houstonian who rose up through the ranks, known for his authenticity and straight-forward approach, seemed to be the perfect pick. When he took over, Turner’s handpicked Task Force on Policing Reform had issued 104 proposals for improving transparency and police oversight. By last year, 90% of the recommendations had been implemented, including releasing officers’ body-camera footage within 30 days of a police shooting, which Acevedo notably declined to do.
Once the public became aware of the spike in crime across the nation during the pandemic, attention shifted to making Houston safer. On that front, Finner implemented a data-based approach to target parts of the city rife with violence and drugs and pushed Turner to earmark additional funds for overtime pay and new officers.
Those strategies appeared to pay off with a sharp decline in homicides and violent crime. With Finner’s retirement, Houston has lost a dedicated public servant with a strong record on reducing crime and we wish his time as chief did not have to end this way. Yet Finner acknowledged the thousands of suspended cases have raised serious questions about HPD’s clearance rates. Even criminologists and crime data experts say it may take months or years to ascertain whether HPD’s statistics are trustworthy.
With so many lingering questions, Finner stepping down was the right call. There are simply too many inconsistencies about his own involvement in the scandal for him to continue to be the face of the department. Even if Finner simply got his dates mixed up on when he first discovered the “lack of personnel” classification or simply focused on when he knew of its widespread use, it is still unclear why his raising the alarm didn’t stop that practice immediately. The Chronicle’s own investigation makes clear that, even after Finner’s verbal directive, investigators started applying the code even more than they had previously. It’s unclear whether this code was being used because of managerial incompetence or laziness. And it’s still unclear how many new crimes were committed because of old cases that could’ve been resolved if they hadn’t been shelved.
We still believe all of these open questions warrant an investigation from an outside agency such as the Texas Rangers or FBI. Removing Finner doesn’t resolve the need for Whitmire to push for it.
I don’t know how much we could trust an investigation by any agency under Greg Abbott’s thumb, but letting the FBI in for a look around would be fine. Whatever the case, good luck to interim Chief Satterwaite and whoever Mayor Whitmire picks as the permanent person. You’re going to need it.
I’m sorry this ended this way for Finner, because there is an advantage to having a chief who is a native Houstonian and worked his way up through HPD ranks for his whole career. But that many suspended cases is not acceptable.