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As mass protests against discriminatory policing roiled the nation following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, then-Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner largely threw his support behind a community-led, 104-point plan to reform the city’s police department.
About three years later, Turner’s successor and fellow Democrat, Mayor John Whitmire, has shown little indication he’s invested in the seminal reimagining of public safety.
On the campaign trail and in the early weeks of his mayorship, Whitmire has made little mention of the landmark plan, focusing instead on a flurry of actions meant to show firm support for the roughly 6,250 members of the city’s police force.
The approach helped Whitmire, the longest-serving member of the Texas Senate, easily defeat his top challenger, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, in a late 2023 race defined by public safety issues. Houston’s violent crime and murder rates remain above pre-pandemic levels, though they were poised to decline in 2023.
But some Houston advocates worry about the future of policing and the city’s roadmap to reform under the Whitmire administration. While the proposal largely aimed to improve transparency and police-community relations, Whitmire has embraced a tougher-on-crime tenor that primarily involves putting more officers on the street.
“It appears just from what I see right now, there is not a ‘pick up the mantle and keep moving’ (attitude) because there’s a very different perspective of policing between the two administrations,“ said Harrison Guy, director of arts and culture for the Fifth Ward Cultural Arts District and one of 45 people on the task force that drafted the plan.
A spokesperson for Whitmire, who took office on Jan. 1, declined to make the mayor available for an interview for this article. In a statement, Whitmire spokesperson Mary Benton said the mayor is aware of the task force recommendations. However, Benton did not comment on whether Whitmire will continue to support efforts underway to put them into action.
“As a strong public safety advocate, Mayor Whitmire has his plan and works closely with Police Chief Finner,” Benton said. Houston Police Department officials referred a request for comment to Whitmire’s office.
As a candidate and newly elected mayor, Whitmire has promised to improve public safety through a handful of ideas, including hiring more police officers, inviting 200 Texas Department of Public Safety officers to patrol Houston and bringing in more civilians to do administrative work currently done by police officers. In a signal of support to the Houston Police Department’s rank-and-file, Whitmire spent his first hours in office with Finner in a patrol car, getting a firsthand look at the city’s crime-fighting efforts.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire steps into a Houston Police Department patrol vehicle with Chief Troy Finner after taking the oath of office as the city’s new mayor Jan. 1 at City Hall. (Marie D. De Jesús / Houston Landing) 
Houston Mayor John Whitmire steps into a Houston Police Department patrol vehicle with Chief Troy Finner on Jan. 1 in downtown Houston. (Marie D. De Jesús / Houston Landing) Houston Mayor John Whitmire drinks hot chocolate with Houston Police Chief Troy Finner on Jan. 2 outside of City Hall. (Meridith Kohut for Houston Landing) Tammica Motley talks with Houston Mayor John Whitmire following his inauguration on Jan. 2 at City Hall. Motley’s son, Jovian Motley, was killed in November 2023 when he was working as a corrections officer at an east Texas prison. (Meridith Kohut for Houston Landing)
Whitmire has also promised to keep “violent criminals behind bars,” take “illegal guns off the streets” and better equip officers to respond to people with mental health issues — though he’s been light on detailed plans for each pledge.
The mayor’s platform stands in contrast, however, to the community-led reform plan.
Produced in September 2020, four months after the death of Floyd, a Houston native, the 153-page foundational document was crafted as a blueprint for the city’s efforts to foster greater police accountability.
The 104 recommendations stretched from revamping an independent police oversight board, to providing more transparency after officers shot civilians and responding differently to people experiencing a mental health crisis.
In April 2021, Turner promised to enact most of the recommendations. According to the Houston Police Department budget adopted by the city in June 2023, 90 percent of the recommended actions have been completed.
Many of the proposals have been clearly implemented, such as overhauling the oversight board and establishing policies to release officer body-camera footage within 30 days of a police shooting.
But city officials have not released a breakdown of which measures have been enacted since 2021, when Houston Public Media, citing data obtained from the city, reported about 60 percent of recommendations had been adopted. When the Houston Landing asked this month for an updated accounting, officials from the Houston Police Department and the mayor’s office did not provide any.
In addition, some recommendations appear stuck in limbo or partially completed. For example, the department’s website shows it has half of the recommended number of Crisis Intervention Response Teams, in which a medical professional partners with police officers when responding to serious mental health crises.
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Roshawn Evans, who helps run Houston’s Police Accountability Project at nonprofit Pure Justice, wants Whitmire to sit down with him after the mayor did not attend the organization’s candidate town hall during the election.
“Before you create, draft or make policies and laws that impact particular people, you need to actually walk with and talk to the people who are impacted by the laws that you craft, or you should probably re-evaluate your position,” Evans said.
Evans says many Houstonians just need opportunities: “Clean socks and underwear and deodorant and house and economic opportunities and, you know, just food,” he said.
Benton said Whitmire will announce more public safety plan details at a future, unspecified date.
Guy acknowledged that City Hall is still in a transition period, but he wondered about long-term accountability for those community members who asked for alternative strategies to just beefing up patrols.
“You can’t say, ‘My thing to fix crime will be more cops, and that’s for every community,’ because there’s definitely communities that aren’t asking for that,” he said.
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