HOUSTON – The controversial Internal Affairs investigation into Houston’s suspended sex assault cases scandal is done.
Police Chief Troy Finner sent that announcement on the last day of April, living up to his promise that the investigation would wrap by the end of the month.
We don’t know anything about the findings yet. Finner says the next step is to have the investigative file reviewed by members of the Independent Police Oversight Board (IPOB) and the Administration Disciplinary Committee (ADC). He’s also looking for recommendations from those two review panels and will update the public in the next two weeks.
The investigation is supposed to answer questions about HOW and WHEN the coding, “Suspended - Lack of Personnel” came about and how and when Chief Finner found out about it.
The scandal broke on February 16 when Chief Finner announced he was appointing a team of investigators to look into thousands of sex assault cases that were suspended “due to a lack of personnel.”
After persistent questioning by KPRC 2 Investigates reporter Diaz, Chief Finner eventually admitted a slew of criminal cases -- 264,000 -- had actually been deactivated. Those date back to 2016 and include the sexual assault cases.
Chief Finner has told KPRC 2 he knew about the coding and suspended cases in the Fall of 2021. Finner claims to have verbally ordered leadership around him to stop using the suspension code, but launched no thorough investigation until nearly 2.5 years later after learning it was still being used.
Internal documents KPRC 2 uncovered show communication between two of Finner’s highest-ranking executive members. One of them, Executive Assistant Chief Jim Jones, wrote “recommend not issuing” on the internal memo.
The Internal Affairs investigation has been controversial because the police union and some activists say at the very least, Police Chief Troy Finner should not have overseen the probe since he was being investigated. One civil rights advocate even pushed for his resignation.
Mayor John Whitmire has a separate independent review committee monitoring the investigation into the scandal. His review committee will examine the Internal Affairs probe and provide commentary and potential recommendations to Mayor Whitmire.
DEACTIVATED CASES SCANDAL: BY THE NUMBERS
264,000 criminal cases were deactivated using the SLOC code: “Suspended - Lack of Personnel”
156,906 cases left to review
107,094 cases reviewed
49,939 fit criteria for being “closed, cleared, inactivated or suspended”
10,000 cases are being reviewed weekly, according to Finner
4,017 adult sex crime cases reviewed
3,501 fit criteria for being “closed, cleared, inactivated or suspended”
1,765 location checks at last known addresses of complainants/survivors
516 sexual assault cases, which are the highest priority, according to Chief Finner, have not been reviewed
427 interviews with complainants/survivors
94 DNA matches with profiles in the nationwide Combined DNA Index System (CODIS)
54 charges filed on 45 suspects