HOUSTON – Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner provided an update on the 264,000 incident reports “suspended due to a lack of personnel” during Thursday’s news conference.
Since first learning of the suspended cases due to a lack of personnel back in February, Finner says his department has since reviewed 81,650 of the total 264,000 incident reports that were labeled “SL, Suspended—Lack of Personnel.”
Of those 81,650 cases, Finner said 26,000 of the incidents were rightfully suspended but wrongly coded. He said instead, they should have been coded as lack of leads, arrest by a patrol, or arrest by an emergency detention order.
Finner added that there were also concerns brought to his attention that homicides were included in the number of suspended cases, but said investigators have only found one incident that was initially coded as a failure to stop and render aid but turned out to be an intentional vehicular assault that turned into a death. That case is currently under investigation.
Finner said investigators reviewed all 807 major assault incidents, including domestic violence reports, which has resulted in five new charges against five suspects. He added that officers have made 1,669 visits to adult and family violence victims whom they could not reach by phone, text or email to provide updates to them on their cases.
In regards to the 4,017 sexual assault cases that were suspended, Finner said 3,948 of those incidents have since been reviewed and 3,079 of those incidents have been inactivated with no workable leads.
“That means we’ve taken this investigation as far as we can at this time. We will of course, at any time, open any case if we have additional information,” Finner said.
Update on HPD Review on Suspended Lack of Personnel Incident Reports: https://t.co/1Ivxbigqsi pic.twitter.com/VwYHWFABqh
— Houston Police (@houstonpolice) April 11, 2024
On March 27, Finner said his department initiated a meeting with the Houston Forensic Science Center and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to request a second level of review for the 4,017 suspended sexual assault cases, along with 5,085 additional incident reports assigned to the adult sex crime unit, which mostly consisted of indecent assaults and indecent exposures.
Since the review, Finner said he has learned that 220 sexual assault incident reports were not captured in the department’s data pool and have since been assigned to investigators. In total, he said there are 938 sexual assault cases with workable leads.
“264,000 incidents. Some people may look at this as negative... I don’t. It is a fact and it’s evidence that our process is working,” Finner said. “I just want to be honest and transparent about that as we work through, you may find some good news and you may find more bad news, but that fact is I made a promise to everyone that we are going to work through each and every one of those incident reports.”
A commander from HPD’s special victims unit addressed the suspended cases that had matching DNA results. The commander said of the 4,017 cases that were sent to HFS, 1,147 were tested for DNA. Out of 1,147 tests, 291 were uploaded to the database, resulting in 76 matching DNA hits.
“Since then, Special Victims Investigators have successfully uploaded all lab reports and assigned these incident reports for follow-up investigations,” the commander said.
Of the 76 incident reports with match DNA results, HPD said 51 incidents have survivors who no longer want to move forward with the complaint, a suspect who has already been charged, or attempts to contact the survivor have been unsuccessful.
Regarding the additional 5,085 assigned to the special victims unit with the “SL” code, 57 kits were uploaded into the forensic science center’s database, resulting in 19 hits, bringing the total to 95, not 96, which was reported on Monday. The HPD commander said one of the hits was a duplicate.
Since the review, the department said all cases have been assigned to investigators.
“Since providing this information, we have met with the Houston Forensic Science Center and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to discuss notification processes, to ensure all CODIS database hits are handled properly,” the commander said.
Finner said he expects the department’s internal affairs investigation into what happened to be wrapped up by the end of April. Houston Mayor John Whitmire also named an independent panel that will review the findings once completed.
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