Houston PD dropped about 2,000 criminal sex assault cases due to lack of personnel.
Posted by
Qale (aka Qale)
Feb 22 '24, 11:44
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The Houston Police Department’s review into sexual assault investigations revealed the number of closed cases since 2021. Police administrators have launched an investigation to determine who was closing out cases using the code to signify lack of personnel, Griffith said Wednesday, one day before Chief Troy Finner is set to address the cases in a Thursday afternoon news conference. But there’s no reason to believe sexual assault investigators were the only ones who’ve used it, Griffith said.
“We didn’t even know there was such a code,” Griffith said. “We don’t know how many other types of crimes were cleared this way. It’s a large investigation to see how many and what types of cases this affects.”
Griffith didn’t have specific numbers of investigators in the sexual assault crimes unit, but said most investigative units were down between 10% to 15%. He explained that the department provides codes to close cases in many different instances – perhaps a complainant wants to withdraw charges, or maybe investigators run out of leads in another case, Griffith said. But lack of manpower shouldn’t be a reason, he argued.
The department investigated between 20,000 and 23,000 felony cases each year since 2021.
Griffith said he suspects someone started intentionally using the code and then, for whatever reason, a supervisor allowed it to continue.
Representatives for the Houston Police Department said Finner would wait until the Thursday news conference to discuss the matter further when reached for comment about Griffith’s assertions.
But Mayor John Whitmire said he was very concerned.
“I am allowing the chief to review and report,” he said. “It happened under a previous administration. I will hold people accountable.”
The news comes days after Finner in a prepared statement announced he assigned a team to review sexual assault cases that had been suspended because of a lack of personnel. He said he’d learned “a significant number” of cases had been suspended. He added he would permanently assign more investigators to the special victims unit.
Finner has not said exactly how many cases might be affected by the review, but Griffith said he’d heard it might be up to 2,000 cases since 2021.
In January, a new group, the Harris County Sexual Assault Response Team, released a report showing of the more than 2,200 sexual assaults reported to the county’s largest law enforcement agencies over nearly two years, 60 led to convictions while hundreds more remain unresolved.
The response team was created in 2021 after state lawmakers passed a law requiring counties to establish unified groups that share resources and information about local sex crimes. The law, Senate Bill 476, requires the team to create a protocol on how sexual assaults should be investigated and an annual report detailing the number of sexual assaults reported, investigated and prosecuted in a given year.
Sonia Corrales, deputy CEO for the Houston Area Women’s Center and one of the members of the new response team, said she wasn’t sure whether the report is connected to Finner’s announcement. But she said she is hopeful that through the review, leaders are doing what they can to make sure victims of sexual assault get the help they need.
“I hope by looking at this, we can get to the root of the problem and address the issue,” she said.
Administrators with the Houston Police Department for months have decried what they allege is a shortage of police officers. The city has around 240 fewer police officers than it did when former Mayor Sylvester Turner was elected in 2015, city budget documents show. More than 90% of the police department’s budget goes to staffing.
Griffith in July 2023 also called on the leader of the city’s forensic science center to step down amid a worsening backlog of evidence turned over to the center’s analysts. Leaders at the city’s crime lab have argued the backlog has slowly been reduced in recent months.
But Griffith said the department’s review into the closed sexual assault cases can’t be blamed on either shortages or the crime lab’s evidence backlog.
“This has nothing to do with the backlog,” he said. “That, in itself, is bad. But this is like the double whammy.”
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