Houston Mayor’s Panel Finds Failures in HPD Registration System

Houston Mayor John Whitmire created an independent committee in March to review HPD’s internal investigation, led by former Houston Police Chief Troy Finner. Finner abruptly resigned last week after media reports revealed conflicting details about when he first learned of the suspension code.

The panel also revealed who created the suspension code that led to mishandling of the case. HPD’s former acting chief in 2016, Martha Montalvo, gave officers the green light to implement the code and authorized the victim’s special diction to use it. HPD Lt. John Colburn told Chron in March that sergeants typically handled how cases were coded.

According to committee member Christina Nowak, the number of cases dropped under the code “lack of suspended staff” is higher than reported. Approximately 268,920 incident reports have been suspended, including thousands of incidents of sexual assault.

“We learned early on that because of technological gaps, divisions could be flooded and lead to the problems we see today, Nowak, a former prosecutor, told city council members Wednesday. inconsistent records management methods across divisions. with very few checks and balances”,

Committee members found that police officers coded 9,167 incidents as “understaffed suspended” from the Special Victims Division, the group charged with reviewing sexual assault cases. In the months that followed, police interviewed dozens of survivors, leading to the arrest of several suspects.

Panel members recommended that the Special Victims Unit work with the Houston Area Women’s Center to create a mandatory 55-minute training program for patrol officers and annual trauma-focused training for all officers . They also recommended scheduling interviews with survivors around their schedules and improving the department’s management system to better handle new cases.

“I still find it mind-boggling and unacceptable that for ten years, no stakeholder, no active leadership, no group of employees, no administration, no one has brought this to our attention until this year,” Whitmire said. “I believe we need to restore trust in the process.”