More than 260,000 criminal cases in Houston have been suspended due to 'lack of personnel' code since 2016

The Houston Police Department has suspended more than 260,000 criminal cases over the past eight years. Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said that this is due to the department's "lack of personnel" code, according to Fox News Digital.

While Finner said last week that the "lack of personnel" suspended more than 4,000 cases of alleged sexual assault, a closer investigation found that the code applied to all the other departments too.

The report noted that about 264,000 incident reports have been suspended due to the shortage since 2016.

The incident reports that have been suspended make up approximately 10% of the 2.8 million reports that have been filed since 2016. Finner noted that of the 264,000 reports, around 100,000 of those are property crimes.

KRIV reported that the Houston Police Department released a statement on Monday concerning, stating:

Our review of adult sex crime cases suspended with a code of "lack of personnel" has expanded to include all other divisions in the department found to be using that same code. We have determined that department-wide approximately 264,000 such incident reports since 2016 were suspended with this code. That figure represents about 10% of the 2.8 million incident reports filed with HPD in the past eight years. Of those 264,000 reports, about 100,000 of them are property crimes. Our efforts to review sexual assault incident reports and contact potential victims continue. We are also moving additional personnel to other investigative divisions to address these incident reports involving crimes against persons.

Finner said he first became aware that the lack of manpower was suspending alleged sexual assault cases in November 2021 and had ordered the department to stop using the code.

Despite Finner's efforts to stop the suspension of these sexual assault cases, he was made aware in February 2024 that these cases were still being suspended due to a lack of manpower. As a result, sexual assault allegations were not actively being investigated.

"Am I proud about this? No, I'm angry, okay, because I know we are better, and we are going to make it right, and we will make it right," Finner said last week, noting that the department is still running short on staff.

Houston Mayor John Whitmore also commented on the development, saying, "I am very concerned. It is unacceptable, and I have instructed Chief Finner to be transparent and continue his review as a top priority."

"Public safety continues to be my highest priority."

Finner said he would hold a news briefing about the issue later in the week.

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