HOUSTON — The Independent Review Committee that was tasked with reviewing the Houston Police Department's suspended incidents submitted its final report this morning during a City Council meeting Wednesday morning.
The committee was appointed by Houston Mayor John Whitmire back in March.
The group served as a second set of eyes to "review the reviewers" as the committee’s chair told the council, providing an outside perspective after HPD conducted its own review.
The controversial code led to more than 260,000 incident reports being suspended and not moving forward, even though many had sufficient information to follow up further.
“Addressing these problems is vital for boosting crime response and managing efficiency,” Christina Nowak, a member of the review committee, told City Council.
The 90-page report laid out key findings:
- Inconsistency in case management
- Understaffing
- Outdated Record Management System
- Civilian staff shortages
- Communication breakdown
It also shared key recommendations:
- Standardize case management procedures
- Enhance RMS capabilities
- Increase civilian staff
- Implement career path structure
- Provide leadership training
- Foster multiagency collaboration
- Improve crime analysis
- Conduct staffing analysis
- Present resource needs to City Council
The need for more officers and civilians has already been recognized as a need for the department but the review committee said that is not enough. Members emphasized the importance of training to prevent damaging practices from occurring in the future.
“If we were to hire ten new officers, but we didn't train them and they don't know what they're doing and they don't know how to work with the system, really, it's fruitless,” Committee Chair Ellen Cohen said. “So, it's not just the hiring of 10 new officers, it's got to be the accurate training of them.”
Mayor John Whitmire held a news conference after the report was shared to the council.
“I'm sure there's still the rest of the story, but I can't dwell on that,” Whitmire said. “We're being positive in going forward.”
Whitmire believes the department can move forward with a new chief and a new outlook on how to better handle cases.
“These are not promises, this is guaranteed,” Whitmire said. “We're going to improve HPD based on the recommendations and the findings of this report.”
HPD Chief J. Noe Diaz shared a statement on X following the release of the report.
“I am currently reviewing the committee’s detailed report and am carefully considering its recommendations,” Diaz said. “We believe this report will help us become better servants to the community and improve our department for generations to come.”
What HPD's investigation found
Last month, then-acting HPD Chief Larry Satterwhite presented the department's final report to the city council. The results of internal affairs investigations were not released, but Satterwhite said no one has been disciplined for the 260,000 suspended cases. He did, however, shed light on what triggered the internal investigation into the code.
It started with a robbery-turned-sexual assault in 2023.
A man robbed a Fiesta Mart in late 2023, fled, tied up a husband and sexually assaulted the wife.
“Everybody was appalled, and we wanted this individual off the street before he could hurt somebody else,” Satterwhite told City Council.
When Houston Police ran the DNA, they got a hit – to another sexual assault case in 2022 that was suspended for lack of personnel. A report was taken but it was never assigned to an officer for investigation.
“She felt like she had been sexually assaulted after staying with a friend,” Satterwhite said of the 2022 victim. “She didn't have a ton of information to offer. But she did have a name, a description and a vehicle.”
A report was taken and referred to the Special Victims Division but it was suspended - lack of personnel. It was never investigated until the subsequent sexual assault in 2023.
That prompted an investigation into the “suspended – lack of personnel” code, according to a report into suspended HPD cases.
That initial probe found 4,017 sexual assaults were suspended under this code. But months later there has been no disciplinary action taken for the use of the code.
At the time, it was not against policy to use the code, Satterwhite said. The code was originally created to demonstrate the need for increased staffing, which is still true.
“HPD remains understaffed,” the report reads. “While the public generally recognizes this in terms of visibility and response times, the Department’s investigative divisions also remain understaffed The Department simply cannot investigate all crimes.”
But there were no guidelines for the code, which led to it becoming widespread after 2018, according to the report. By 2021, a sergeant wrote a “blue note” asking that the title of the code be changed.
“I mentioned the optics of how the use of this code may give the public the wrong impression as to how a variety of cases are handled,” the sergeant wrote.
An email chain and memo continued the conversation, but none of the correspondence, “indicated any discussion occurred regarding the practice of suspending incident reports with workable leads.”
So cases continued to be suspended until this year. Satterwhite admitted HPD missed opportunities to investigate this code seven times over the past eight years.
“We should have asked more questions where we should have done more, and I'm talking about chiefs enough that we could have done more and should have done more throughout this 8-year period,” Satterwhite said.
HPD officials pledged to investigate all sexual assaults during council today and some details about the reopened suspended cases.
Officers have now reviewed 79% of the cases in the special victims division, including 20 arrests; 56% of cases in the major assaults and family violence division, including 251 arrests; and all of the cases in the homicide division, including 25 arrests.
Full HPD final report on suspended cases for lack of personnel code
Here is the full report released on July 31 from HPD.