HOUSTON – Houston Police Chief Troy Finner sent a department-wide memo informing officers the “Suspended—Lack of Personnel” code is no longer visible in the department’s records system.
The signed memo went out on March 1st reading, “The investigations case status code “SL” (Suspended - Lack of Personnel) is no longer visible in the drop-down options box of the Records Management System (RMS).”
Chief Finner also wrote commanders in HPD will review status codes of investigations each week to make sure “SL” is no longer used. He wrote the weekly review is needed because “manual entry of this code cannot be removed because it could potentially crash RMS.” The chief writes once the RMS is in place, the code will not be included.
The memo was delivered to officers on the same day KPRC 2 Investigates confirmed two assistant chiefs, Kevin Deese and Ernest Garcia, were demoted because of the suspended cases.
The department faced severe criticism following the revelation that around 264,000 cases, constituting roughly 10% of its total caseload over the past eight years, had been suspended across various HPD divisions due to manpower shortages. Alarmingly, among these cases were over 4,000 incidents of sexual assault.
Chief Finner said he was going to have a press conference on the suspended cases last week. It’s unclear if he will do one this week.