HOUSTON – During a news conference Monday with Houston Police Chief Troy Finner and Mayor John Whitmire, the city leaders addressed the mishandling of thousands of criminal cases, including sexual assault cases.
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Whitmire briefly touched on the decision to ban the “SL” code, which stands for: “Suspended—Lack of Personnel.”
“It is unbelievable that this code started in 2015. I mentioned the other day that I’ve been chairman of criminal justice for the last 30 years in Austin. Do you know how often I meet with police officers, their leadership, and their union? Not one person since 2015 mentioned it. Something’s broken. No one brought it to our attention,” Whitmire said.
When asked who invented the code, Whitmire said he was not going to name names but instead referred to the person as “dumb.”
“This is not a time for him to be naming names. I’ll leave it at that. The investigation is going forward. It’s an active investigation. We’re going to review. It’s an internal affairs investigation. People need to be held accountable. The dumb person who came up with that code without sounding alarm,” Whitmire said.
Now, Whitmire said the use of the code has stopped and has since been corrected by the Houston Police Department.
On March 1, a signed memo went out reading, The investigations case status code “SL” (Suspended - Lack of Personnel) is no longer visible in the drop-down options box of the Records Management System (RMS).”
Chief Finner also wrote commanders in HPD will review status codes of investigations each week to make sure “SL” is no longer used. He wrote the weekly review is needed because “manual entry of this code cannot be removed because it could potentially crash RMS.” The chief writes once the RMS is in place, the code will not be included.
“I’m the one that went to the mayor and said, ‘You know what? This call was used in the wrong way. I want to open up everything. Any incident report it was used on.’ That’s why you have that huge number,” Finner said.
The department faced severe criticism following the revelation that around 264,000 cases, constituting roughly 10% of its total caseload over the past eight years, had been suspended across various HPD divisions due to manpower shortages. Alarmingly, among these cases were over 4,000 incidents of sexual assault.
Whitmire also responded briefly about the comments made by Texas Governor Greg Abbott regarding the news that thousands of investigations including over 4,000 sexual assault investigations were suspended due to a lack of personnel at the Houston Police Department.
On Saturday, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Abbott referenced a case where a rape case was suspended due to short staff and the person who allegedly committed the rape went on to commit another one. The governor said the suspect should have never been allowed on the streets and that cities should be held liable for negligence in similar cases.
Whitmire responded Monday, saying, in part, “The worst thing we can do, as I stand before you today, is politicise this. The victims deserve better. Our rank-and-file HPD officers deserve better. Houstonians deserve better. We understand the seriousness of this. You can’t say it any stronger than I have. We’re going to review it. Be transparent. Hold people accountable. Correct the measures and go forward,” said Whitmire.
He additionally called it a “political rhetoric” by Abbott and said this isn’t the time to play politics.
