HOUSTON – Apologizing for the “terrible mistake” that “manipulated” Houston’s crime rate over the last eight years, Mayor John Whitmire appointed a 5-member panel to investigate “how in the world this existed for eight years without someone having the good sense to sound the alarm.”
Ellen Cohen will chair the panel. She’s past President and CEO of the Houston Area Women’s Center, a former City Council Member, and also served in the Texas State House of Representatives.
Working alongside her are a Texas Ranger, Pastor, Deputy Inspector General and City Attorney:
- Captain Jeff Owles | Texas Ranger with 21 years of experience in law enforcement.
- Christina Nowak | Deputy Inspector General for the City of Houston
- Arturo Michel | Houston City Attorney
- Reverend Leon Preston | Longtime pastor at Yale Street Baptist Church
The mayor, who ran for office on a public safety platform, admonished the former administration and police leadership, saying the city’s criminal justice system was terribly broken.
“It’s affecting the victims. It’s affecting the morale of officers. It’s affecting holding people accountable for their acts in crimes. I believe it’s manipulated our crime rate,” Whitmire said, challenging the credibility of the city’s crime data.
“I think the credibility of previous statements by the City of Houston about crime was going in the right direction. It’s been revealed that that was a spin because the credibility of the data collected by HPD and released to the public for at least the last eight years is flawed.”
The scandal unraveled last month, with a Friday night social media post by Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner, saying he’d learned a significant number of adult sexual assault cases were suspended due to “Lack of Personnel.” He said it was unacceptable, should have never happened, and would not continue.
The number of cases kept growing.
- Initially, HPD told KPRC 2 Investigates that nearly 2,000 sexual assault cases had been deactivated; never investigated.
- During the chief’s first news conference on February 26, that number ballooned to 4,017 sexual assault cases.
- KPRC 2 Investigates Reporter, Mario Diaz’s persistent questioning of the chief ultimately revealed more than 265,000 criminal cases were actually deactivated.
They’d all been coded a certain way -- SL -- which stands for “suspended for lack of personnel.”
KPRC 2 Investigates learned Chief Finner knew about the coding and cases as far back as 2021. The chief told us he ordered officers to stop using the SL code in November of 2023, but some kept doing it. We found 44 additional deactivated cases after that point in time.
Now, the department is scrambling to review the SL cases, making the sexual assault reports the highest priority.
Mayor John Whitmire has vowed every single case will get reviewed, that he’d put together an outside panel for an independent investigation and that the “dumb person” who came up with the SL code would also be investigated.