HPD code suspending cases 'manipulated' Houston crime rate in prior admins, Mayor Whitmire says
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- A frustrated Mayor John Whitmire again apologized to crime victims on Wednesday while also making a bombshell claim amid the ongoing suspended cases scandal rocking the Houston Police Department.
While announcing the launch of an independent review committee into the thousands of cases left uninvestigated for years, Whitmire said the city's crime rate, celebrated as declining in previous administrations, was "manipulated" due to inaccurate reporting impacted by the department's low-staffing code.
Whitmire called any boasting of a falling rate as "spin."
The mayor said five committee members are being appointed to the panel, looking at HPD's handling of the more than 260,000 suspended incident reports.
Ellen Cohen, a former state lawmaker and city mayor pro-tem, will chair the committee, with Christina Nowak of the Texas Office of Inspector General and Texas Rangers Capt. Jeff Owles as members.
City Attorney Arturo Michel and Rev. Lion Preston are the remaining panelists.
Whitmire vowed to personally report the panel's findings to Houstonians rather than information funneling through HPD.
"We want transparency, credibility, accountability. Not only how this happened, but you're witnessing what we're doing about it, but (also) what we're doing to prevent it in the future," Whitmire said earlier this week.
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The public was informed of the thousands of incident reports coded in HPD's computer system as suspended due to a lack of personnel. The code was created back in 2016.
HPD Chief Troy Finner promised the code wouldn't be used going forward. When asked why the code couldn't be deleted, Finner said their record management system is so outdated that the whole system would crash if they tried to delete it.
"There's never an excuse to not investigate - to make sure the front-end case management system is robust and in place," he said. "We failed in that area. Gonna tighten it up."
For now, the system is only slowing down an already massive task of investigating these reports that they set aside. However, a new record management system is set to come next year.
As for their work on these suspended reports, earlier this week, Finner said 130 investigators had so far reviewed more than 3,000 reports and visited 752 homes since he first announced the problem.
WATCH: Full news conference announcing HPD independent review comittee
SEE ALSO: HPD's 'outdated' record management system slowing down 265K suspended reports, Chief Finner says
