Harris County Sheriff’s Office has 1,300 child abuse reports amongst backlog of larger 51,000 cases.
Posted by
Qale
Jun 17 '24, 18:37
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More than 1,300 child abuse reports are among a backlog of 51,000 Harris County Sheriff's Office cases going back to 2020. Of those reports, 13,000 have not been read.
And without a long-term plan to streamline the office's operations and bring in enough new recruits to replace those eligible to retire, the case pileups — which the agency's own leaders called "disturbing" — might worsen in coming years, an outside agency hired to conduct an audit reported.
Conversations about the sheriff’s office backlog have swirled internally for months, but they accelerated after news broke this year that the Houston Police Department had “suspended” more than 260,000 investigations in recent years due to a “lack of personnel.”
“I think the public will understand that we have a backlog of cases that need a thorough investigation, but I do not think the public or the media would be very understanding of the fact that we haven’t even read 10s of thousands of offense reports,” HCSO Chief Deputy Mike Lee wrote to office leadership in a March 20 email the Houston Chronicle obtained through an open records request. “We need a plan.”
On the day of Lee's email, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez ordered that work begin to reduce the pile of “not reviewed” cases.
“There is not one single step that will automatically get us to where we need to be,” he wrote, “but we need to start somewhere.”
As of March 25, records show, the agency’s backlog comprised 24,100 burglaries or thefts, 10,600 auto thefts, 1,300 child abuse cases and 600 adult sex crimes investigations.
Sheriff’s office leaders said last week that they have begun to address the issue, but they acknowledged that more work remains.
The office, prior to renewed conversations about the backlog, had contracted an outside consulting firm that released a draft audit of recommendations and concerns about the office's overall operations. The draft audit mentions the backlog several times. Sheriff's office leadership then developed a plan, sent out via email March 22, that called for 18 deputies and supervisors to temporarily move among divisions to help review cases and whittle down the backlog.
Tommy Diaz, assistant chief of law enforcement command, said Wednesday that the early efforts have already whittled down the unreviewed backlog cases to around 6,000 across divisions — the vast majority remaining in auto theft. The overall number of cases in the backlog as of Thursday had been reduced to around 47,300, according to updated data provided by Diaz.
Diaz said the child abuse division struggles in part because it requires multiple agencies coordinating to advance a case.
“That type of investigation is highly prescribed,” he said. “You’re going through somewhat of a checklist.”
Investigators must contact an expert to interview child victims. Often, multiple agencies are involved in cases where reports don’t arrive directly at the sheriff’s office, Diaz said. Unlike some divisions, all of the child abuse investigations had been reviewed.
Randy Burton, a Houston attorney who founded the nonprofit organization Justice for Children, called the child abuse backlog "unforgivable" and said that if the sheriff's office wasn't sufficiently staffed to investigate those cases, it needed to make that case to the county.
"If I were a county commissioner and did not do something about this, I would look for a new job," he said.
The authors of the February draft audit wrote echoed concerns about the backlogged child abuse investigations, saying they'd heard the cases often remain unassigned unless a victim calls and requests the status of the investigation.
Child abuse investigations can often be time-intensive, but some are straightforward and any delay can be fatal, Burton said.
Both the March plan and the audit also called for office administrators to consider long-term solutions to the backlog, including using technology to free up deputies for more investigations, how to better recruit new deputies and moving employees permanently across some divisions.
“You’re looking at the really root cause, macro-level issues of the criminal justice system,” Diaz said.
Diaz said the sheriff's office backlog can’t be compared to the Houston Police Department’s scandal over suspended cases. The backlog comprises cases the office hasn't assigned yet, not cases it has completely suspended, Diaz said.
The police department’s scandal did result in renewed conversations among sheriff’s office leaders about the problem of the backlog, but the issue wasn’t unknown before then, with Gonzalez and others making regular improvements in recent years to try to eliminate it, Diaz said. For instance, the sheriff’s office will move to a new records management system at the end of the year after the draft audit critiqued the existing one for making it difficult for investigators to log evidence in one place, among other technical difficulties.
Gonzalez has also invested in a centralized analyst team that sheriff’s office leaders hope will give them more comprehensive data to make staffing decisions, Diaz said.
Diaz cited many of the audit’s conclusions while discussing the problem of the backlog, saying leaders have already taken steps in some areas but that structural issues remain. Preliminary discussions have suggested the office might need as many as 200 additional investigators, but administrators are hopeful they might be able to reach that number using differing methods.
For instance, the office has already seen some success using a TeleDeputy program to keep deputies from responding to some specific calls, and leaders are holding talks about how they might handle the 80,000 house alarm calls they get each year.
The office for the first time is also currently hosting two concurrent cadet classes for a total of around 116 cadets, whereas it usually hosts around 60 to 70 at a given time, Diaz added.
“All these things are part of the conversation,” he said. “All factors are being assessed.”
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