Just 265 charges filed as HPD almost done reviewing 260K suspended cases

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- After months of reaching out to victims who were initially ignored by investigators, the Houston Police Department is almost done reviewing all of the hundreds of thousands of incidents that were suspended using a controversial code.

For the past nine months, HPD says it's been trying to reach victims whose cases were never investigated when they first turned to the department for help.

In February, a scandal uncovered 260,000 incidents marked as "suspended" due to a lack of HPD staff.

The department was forced to shift resources so it could review every incident. For context, there were just 256,188 incidents in all of 2023, according to HPD crime data.

This month, HPD's dashboard on its progress shows it has reviewed 94% of the suspended cases.

But, despite tens of thousands of cases reviewed, just 178 felony and 87 misdemeanor charges were filed, HPD told 13 Investigates. That's less than 0.1% of suspended incidents that resulted in a charge.

A majority of the suspended cases involved major assaults, family violence, and property and financial crimes.

But we know there were at least 4,000 sex assault incidents that were suspended.

13 Investigators wanted more information about the charges filed. HPD routinely releases information to the public when arrests are made, and charges are filed; they didn't do so on Wednesday.

They said we would have to file an open records request for those charges, and even then, there's no guarantee we'd get any answers.

The only thing HPD said is that is in "ongoing review."

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