Houston Police Department officials pledged to “push for efficiency and effectiveness” in 2025 and further clarified their stance on immigration enforcement as part of a Tuesday presentation to the city’s Public Safety Committee.
At the Tuesday morning meeting in council chambers, Assistant Chief Megan Howard of HPD promised the opening of a new central station by the end of the year, the implementation of a new records management system by early April, and transferring property room operations to the Houston Forensic Science Center, among other measures as part of her presentation on HPD’s goals for 2025.
Meanwhile, Howard also assured HPD would take a backseat on immigration enforcement.
“We are a local law enforcement agency, and our focus is on state law, local ordinance, and our local criminal enforcement duties,” she told the committee. “Our policy is that we do not step into operations that are focused on immigration enforcement.”
The statement followed questions from Council Member Abbie Kamin, who said constituents had been reaching out to her with questions about immigration enforcement. In response, Howard said their focus would stay on violent crime, and insisted that HPD wants Houstonians to feel safe approaching police.
“We have to work cooperatively with our entire community,” said Howard. “It’s important that anyone who needs help is comfortable and willing to come to us and ask for help, and we will take their reports, and we will make sure that we do our best to get justice for victims of crime. “
Howard explained that the new central station would house the Central and Special Operations Divisions, many of which had been displaced since Hurricane Harvey. And the new records management system —which reporting by KPRC 2 estimated at $31.1 million— is expected to accelerate case management. The department’s current system had been blamed for slowing down casework.
A year of ups and downs
During her presentation, Howard also lauded efforts from 2024, such as the new cadet incentives that City Council codified in 2024, including a $10,000 raise for new trainees, $5,000 incentive when they graduate, and a new firearm stipend.
The $4.5 million infusion into the department’s $1 billion budget brought HPD’s first-year salary rates nearer to those of San Antonio and Chicago, according to an HPD presentation to the committee last year, but surprised some city leaders last fall, when city controller Chris Hollins stressed that “continuing to increase the City’s cost base without additional revenue or offsetting savings is not fiscally responsible.”
On Tuesday, Howard insisted it was making a difference.
“When you do a look back at the last few months of 2024 compared to the last few months of 2023 we believe there has been a real change in terms of the perception of the strength of our compensation packages,” she said.
Numbers shared by the department at the meeting show that between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the department had netted 130 additional uniformed positions.
Still, Howard named staffing and budget as their biggest challenges in 2024, as well as the department’s suspended cases scandal, when over 250,000 incident reports were wrongly coded as “suspended – lack of personnel” including 4,000 sexual assault reports.
The presentation came as the police union began its negotiations with the city, where Houston Police Officers Union president Douglas Griffith has noted they plan to focus on officer pay and oversight.
“Hopefully when that finishes, HPD will become a more attractive place to work in terms of salary, and that we’ll see the same success that that the fire department is seeing,” said Council Member Julian Ramirez, who was concerned that cadets may be leaving the department after their bonus.
After the public safety meeting wrapped on Tuesday, City Council geared up to vote on another police initiative: Mayor John Whitmire’s newest appointees to the city’s independent police oversight board.
The nine Houstonians —whose resumes have not been published — would serve as members through January 2027. The appointments are slated to be voted on at Wednesday’s 9 a.m. City Council meeting.
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