HOUSTON – After months of waiting, we are finally getting some answers from the Houston Police Department on why there was a code that suspended more than 260,000 incident reports.
Around 9 a.m. Wednesday, acting Police Chief Larry Satterwhite presented a report titled “Use of the SL Code, A Report of Findings” before Houston City Council. This is huge because, throughout this entire investigation, HPD and Mayor John Whitmire have promised to be transparent and keep the community informed about what’s happening.
KPRC 2 Investigates has been staying on top of this story since the beginning to ensure the mayor and HPD kept their promise and held them accountable.
“There are real victims in the public that were affected by this,” Satterwhite said in his opening statements. He also made it very clear to all at City Hall the code practice was, “a bad policy enacted in our department.”
Former police Chief Troy Finner, who resigned in May, first announced the suspended lack of personnel code in February. That’s when we learned that more than 264,000 cases were suspended because of manpower.
In February, we started speaking to victims who were shocked by the news and felt like Houston police let them down.
In March, Mayor Whitmire appointed an independent review committee that examined how HPD handled the suspended cases which led to charges being filed against suspects. In April, the department said they finished reviewing 4,017 adult sexual assault incident reports that were previously suspended due to a lack of personnel.
After former police chief Troy Finner resigned, the Mayor named Satterwhite as acting chief. Although, he has been a part of HPD’s leadership for several years, so Satterwhite made it clear leadership failed Houstonians by not realizing there was a problem.
“A failure to recognize what was going, a failure to try and correct it,” he explained. “We should have asked more questions.”
Here is the full 43-page report:
Satterwhite confirmed to Mayor John Whitmire HPD officers were trained in how to use the SL code. However, it wasn’t until after his presentation, during a news conference in the mayor’s office, that he admitted he was personally remorseful after KPRC 2 Investigates pointed out that he never officially apologized today.
At that news conference, Satterwhite also revealed that Chandra Hatcher is now a former executive assistant chief. In May, KPRC 2 Investigates exposed that the investigation into the suspended cases had to be reopened after questions of integrity were raised regarding a letter written by Hatcher that launched the investigation.