Between 2016 and 2024, Houston Police Department leaders had multiple opportunities to question — and potentially stop — the use of an internal case code that has rocked the agency.
Internal auditors found in 2016 that HPD’s division investigating sex crimes used the code — “suspended – lack of personnel” — on one-third of cases in the first six months of the year.
In 2017, the department’s newly appointed captain of the Special Victims Division discovered that their caseload included 1,600 unassigned child sexual assault cases.
And in 2018, then-executive assistant chief Troy Finner, who would later become police chief, found a routine case had been labeled suspended, ordered a commander to research the matter, then never followed up.
Despite at least seven chances to take action or investigate further, no high-ranking police officials halted the use of the code attached to about 264,000 incidents over the past decade, according to a new internal report released Wednesday by HPD and city leaders. HPD’s findings mark the latest disclosure in the scandal that has dogged the department for months and contributed to the May resignation of Finner.
The 43-page report represents the clearest public admission by the department that top brass repeatedly failed to grasp the significance of the code, which signified that police were no longer investigating an alleged crime due to staffing shortages. HPD officials have said the code was a well-meaning but misguided effort in the mid-2010s to highlight the amount of reports the department receives relative to its staffing levels.
“What happened in this particular case… it’s not one person. Or two people. It’s not even five. It was a department fail. It was a leadership fail. It was a systemic fail, and we are working to overcome and to take care of those men, women and children who were possibly, and in some cases were, a victim,” said HPD Acting Chief Larry Satterwhite.
At the same time, the report did not shed much new light on a key, unanswered question: How many crime victims were harmed because police shelved their cases? HPD officials have said a small percentage of victims of more-serious crimes were denied justice, but many property and lower-level crimes typically are not investigated to the fullest extent by police departments across the country due to staffing limitations.
Satterwhite, speaking before the Houston City Council, said very few cases were reopened once they were classified as suspended. Satterwhite repeatedly said “real victims were affected by this,” holding up a rape case in which DNA evidence matched a year-old suspended sexual assault case as a high-profile example of the department’s failures.
Whether any current or former officials will face repercussions is unclear. An internal affairs investigation is entering its seventh month. Two executive assistant chiefs were demoted days after then-police Chief Troy Finner ordered a review of the code in February.
A detailed accounting
HPD leaders and media reports have shined light on some details of the code’s usage, though the department’s latest report provides the agency’s most extensive accounting to date.
The report’s authors wrote that officers started assigning the code several years ago to crime and incident reports that had workable leads but no one to investigate them. At the time, then-chief Charles McClelland Jr. was lobbying city leaders to boost HPD staffing, and the code was designed to help illustrate the impact of officer shortages.
Department leaders, however, failed to issue written guidance on how staff should use the code, resulting in widespread confusion among rank-and-file officers. Frequent leadership changes and a clunky case management system also contributed to officers deploying the code thousands of times per month.
In the following years, multiple HPD leaders became aware of the code and raised concerns about the code.
In 2021, for example, a sergeant wrote to then-Executive Chief Matt Slinkard that the code “may give the public the wrong impression about how a variety of cases are handled.” Several top HPD officials — though apparently not Finner, who wasn’t included on communications about the code — agreed that the code should no longer be used.
However, HPD officials wrote in their report that they could not find evidence showing the change became part of department standard procedures.
The report contains 15 steps that HPD has taken or will take to improve its operations. More than half are specific to the Special Victims Division and align with recommendations issued by an independent review panel commissioned by Whitmire. They include:
- Developing a common framework for classifying cases and keeping track of them.
- Adopting written directives to ensure clear communication of department-wide policy changes.
- Documenting attendance at leadership meetings.
- Thoroughly reviewing cases before investigations are suspended.
- Reconfiguring case management codes so they align with the Texas Penal Code.
New policies, more police?
Whitmire said Wednesday that he was pleased with the report and offered his thanks to Finner, Satterwhite and other police officials.
“We will not rest once this is fixed,” Whitmire said. “I think you’ll be seeing changes in operations very soon, but we have a very good police force.”
Satterwhite defended his department’s report during a news conference after Wednesday’s council session, saying he carries the once-suspended sexual assault case with him.
“We’re not running away from anything,” Satterwhite said. “We’re going to tell the story, whether it’s good or bad. Now we’re just making sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Satterwhite said the department needs more funding, in addition to operational improvements, to conduct better investigations. At current staffing levels, violent crime will be prioritized over lower-level crimes such as property offenses, he said.
In response to Satterwhite’s comments, Councilmember Sallie Alcorn called for the city’s property tax revenue cap to be raised, which would allow the city to collect more money for police salaries. Passed by voters in 2004, the city first hit the revenue cap in 2014 and has had to reduce its property tax rate nine times in the last 10 years to keep from exceeding the limit.
“The public needs to know that we cannot have it both ways,” Alcorn said. “We cannot have super-low taxes, we’re decreasing our tax rate each year, and demand that we do a much better job at policing.”
Councilmember Joaquin Martinez said the city should consider imposing a trash fee to help pay for increased public safety services.
When asked by reporters whether he favors asking voters to raise the revenue cap, Whitmire declined to take a position. He said his administration isn’t through rooting out corruption and identifying instances of wasteful spending, citing the recent prosecutions of a former public works project manager and a staffer at the Midtown Redevelopment Authority.
“Nothing is on the table until I can go to the public and allow them to know that we’ve eliminated as much corruption as we can find,” Whitmire said. “As I’ve said repeatedly, we don’t make the city safe, nothing else matters.”
The Whitmire-appointed Houston Police Independent Review Committee still plans to release its final report of its probe. Whitmire said the panel will wrap up its work “in the near future.”
An interim report released by the committee in May found that HPD doesn’t use a consistent, agency-wide system for managing and classifying criminal cases, a shortcoming that increases the likelihood of cases getting lost in the system.
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