When Houston Police Chief Troy Finner retired, the department was embroiled in something of a scandal. Indeed, there is an ongoing internal investigation into the department’s suspension of more than 200,000 cases.
Finner first went public with this information earlier this year, and he says that is part of what led to him being ousted from his role.
Now, in a series of interviews with the Houston Chronicle, Finner expressed concerns about transparency from the department on this issue.
Matt deGrood, who reported on this story for the Chronicle, said before Finner left he had put together a plan to address the case suspensions.
“It included press conferences, and then he wanted to release a final report detailing everything that had happened,” deGrood said. “And since he’s left, the department hasn’t held any press conferences. And he’s worried that they might not release a final report.”
The case dismissals came as Houston police tried to manage their workload in the face of understaffing.
“Quite frankly, I think it was a numbers game,” deGrood said. “Major police departments receive a significant number of reports every year. And I think this was a flawed effort to try to manage the caseload, so to speak.”
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Hours after the Chronicle’s report was published, Mayor John Whitmire announced plans to release a final report next week, deGood said.
The department had a code to refer to cases that had been suspended — “SL,” which was short for “Suspended – Lack of Personnel.” According to deGrood, this code was created in 2016, though department sources say the practice of shelving certain cases had been going on informally since at least the 1980s.
Finner told the Chronicle he regrets that he failed to grasp the extent of the tossed criminal investigations sooner. He said the use of the SL code was so normalized that the severity of the issue simply didn’t register with anyone in leadership.
Before he retired, Finner was part of the reason this issue came to the public’s attention.
“The department sort of announced they were looking into this in February,” deGrood said. “The number of cases kept growing, and the department’s response kind of became more serious the more they kind of got a feel for how big the problem was.”
