Report On Houston Police Dropped Cases-Things HPD Looks The Other Way At

Mayor Whitmire's review committee on the Houston Police Department suspended case scandal issued its report today.  

Here is a story on the report from KUHF. 

From the KUHF story: Half a year after the Houston Police Department was rocked by a scandal involving a quarter million suspended cases, Mayor John Whitmire's Independent Review Committee released its finding on Wednesday....The committee found an "overwhelming volume of incident reports and limited time and resources" contributed to the dropped cases, and it suggested "substantial resources, technology, personnel, and infrastructure investment" to address the concerns...."It still shocks me that this was allowed to continue for ten years," Whitmire said." ...Echoing the findings of HPD's internal investigation, the committee's report found multiple instances over several years where department leadership raised concerns about the use of the "insufficient personnel" code...Council member Edward Pollard called for an "extreme cultural shift" in the department. ."To get to that amount of cases means there was a lot of work not being done," Pollard said. "It may be a culture of, ‘Hey, let’s just code this and move on.'"

I read the full report. I was curious how a culture developed that allowed serious crimes to be disappeared by just entering a code. I also know from protests I've been part of, that HPD wastes a lot of resources and is content to have officers assigned to protests sit in the police car looking at the phone, or just talking the time away amongst themselves and not paying attention.      

Here is full 87 page report on the City of Houston website. It is worth reading. 

The report details a mix of outdated technology, poor communication and inconsistent practices across departments within HPD, command structures that don't foster good day-to-day operations and a lack of resources. What Mayor Whitmire and Counciman Pollard said in the news story above also seems to have relevance.

It went on for years and nobody spoke up. Spiking serious cases with little thought was part of police culture.   

I'm not an expert on police policy and police policy is not the purpose of the Houston Democracy Project. I just know what I read in the report commissioned by Mayor Whitmire.   

I'll say these three things:

1. We hear a lot about how Democratic judges in Harris County are soft on crime. But HPD was letting criminals go left and right. Where are the police unions and all the tough on crime folks? It is like these people have a political agenda more so than always being actually tough on crime.    

2. Based on this report and from practices I've seen at many protests, officers can as a matter of routine be very casual about their duties and suffer no consequence. Remember that as we face an authoritarian threat and we need protection from the right.   

3. Looking the other way at many serious crimes, mirrors how HPD and police unions so often look the other way at the extremism of the right.       

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