The chief of the Houston Police Department retired abruptly amid an investigation into more than 260,000 incident reports since 2016 that were not investigated, including sexual assaults and other felonies, because of a “lack of personnel.”
The departure of the chief, Troy Finner, was announced by Mayor John Whitmire during a City Council meeting on Wednesday. He praised the chief and called him a “friend” but said that “new information” related to the suspended cases was distracting the Police Department.
After the council meeting, Mr. Whitmire told reporters that the retirement had come after he had discussions with Mr. Finner on Tuesday.
“I dealt with it because it was a distraction to the mission of the men and women in H.P.D.,” the mayor said.
The Houston Police Department has been under intense scrutiny since February, when the chief announced a review of more than 4,000 sexual assault cases that had been suspended because of a purported lack of personnel to pursue investigations. That inquiry soon ballooned to include a large number of felonies as well as misdemeanors, which had been given the same internal code — “SL” — meaning they had been suspended for personnel reasons.
A 2014 analysis of the department’s staffing found tens of thousands of cases that were not investigated, including thousands of assault cases. Mr. Whitmire has said the code for suspending a case because of a lack of personnel was created soon after.
The department had more than 5,300 officers in 2014. Now, it has about 5,100. While the mayor acknowledged that the department had staffing issues, he said the code had been used to dispense with cases that should have been prioritized, including serious crimes.
Mr. Whitmire lamented that the widespread use of the code had not triggered someone to go public earlier, in order to raise alarm about the need for more staff.
The chief said last month that all of the suspended sexual assault investigations had been re-examined and that most had been appropriately closed, cleared or suspended.
But others had been suspended that should not have been, including 80 cases in which DNA from the crime scene matched a potential suspect in a national database who remained on the loose. The department said it was now pursuing those cases, and others it identified in the re-examination.
In a brief interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Finner said that he was “proud of the way that we’re responding to the SL case,” acknowledging that it had been a “painful time” for the department but also one where “we could stand up, admit to things and fix things and move forward.”
Mr. Finner said the experience could provide a lesson to officers in Houston and around the country.
“I think the agency and the whole profession will be better because of what Houston P.D. is going through, and I’m proud of that,” Mr. Finner said. “I just want everyone to learn that when you’re dealing with violent crimes against persons, we have to investigate them, man. No matter what the backlog is, no matter what the staffing is. You’ve got to make a way to investigate it.”
He declined to discuss the continuing inquiry by the department into the extent to which crime reports had been set aside, saying it was nearing its conclusion. Two assistant chiefs were demoted earlier this year in connection with the coding practice. Another resigned.
A separate investigation, by an independent review panel commissioned by Mr. Whitmire in March, would discuss its findings next week, the mayor said on Wednesday.
The city’s police will be overseen by an acting chief, Larry Satterwhite, a top commander in the department. Mr. Whitmire said a search would be conducted, both inside the department and around the country, for a permanent replacement.
Mr. Finner rose through the ranks of the Houston Police Department over a 34-year career to become its chief in 2021. He said that he first became aware of the use of the code to effectively set aside cases that year and that he ordered its use to stop.
Still, the practice continued, Mr. Finner said in February, leading him to open the internal investigation.
But that timeline began to be questioned inside and outside of the department.
On Tuesday, the chief posted a statement defending himself after local television reports about an email exchange from 2018, before Mr. Finner was in charge of the department. In the exchange, Mr. Finner responded to an email about a road rage report that had been “suspended lack of personnel.”
Mr. Finner said in the statement that he did not recall the email and that nothing suggested that the designation had been part of a widespread practice at that time. Mr. Finner said his response to the email had been that the use of the designation was wrong.
“I forwarded the email to the commander, saying it was unacceptable and to make sure the case was properly investigated,” he said in his statement.
But Mr. Whitmire told reporters on Wednesday that the revelation had been the “final straw.”
“Chief Finner was spending so much time dealing with the press, dealing with the department,” the mayor said. “It was affecting operations at H.P.D. That’s the bottom line.”
The disclosure of the email came as part of an internal affairs investigation, according to Ray Hunt, the executive director of the Houston Police Officers’ Union.
Mr. Hunt said the roots of the recent concern over cases suspended under the code stretched back to at least last fall, when investigators matched DNA from a rape case to an earlier sexual assault that had been suspended because of a lack of personnel.
“That’s how this whole thing started in October,” Mr. Hunt said. A spokesman for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Hunt said that some cases, particularly property crimes and other reports of minor offenses, may get pushed to the back of the line for investigators because of staffing issues. But he said there was little excuse for doing the same in sexual assault cases, particularly when there is a DNA match.
