HOUSTON – The road leading to the now infamous “SL” code that sparked a movement within some units of the Houston Police Department to push cases aside for “lack of personnel” began in 2014 when Chief Charles McClelland presented his plan to City Council for growing the department. Keeping that expansion plan on track meant every 3 years, HPD had to justify why they needed more officers.
“This report serves to put readers on notice that left unaddressed, staffing deficiencies will, in time adversely affect the HPD’s ability to provide expected quality services designed to keep our citizens and Houston safe,” McClelland said at the time.
2015: A team of 30 HPD employees reviewed the department’s case management system and case clearance rates. They found the codes being used for cases didn’t sync up with how cases were actually processed. Different divisions were keeping their own databases and the department needed a centralized system. They came up with a list of codes to test and possibly implement, including SL - Suspended Lack of Manpower.
2016: Martha Montalvo was appointed Acting Chief of police when Chief McLelland retired. Barely two weeks into her interim role, Montalvo signed off on new codes approved by Assistant Chief Donald McKinney, who had taken over the project to help overhaul the department’s Records Management System. One of the new codes was SL - Suspended Lack of Manpower.
In training classes, the SL code was referred to and remained, Suspended - Lack of Personnel.
“Suspended - Lack of Personnel” coding could be used for “all primary and secondary cases that have workable leads but cannot be assigned due to manpower limitations. These cases could be assigned for investigation or non-investigative follow up at a later time,” according to internal documents within the mayor’s Independent Review Committee’s interim report.
That same memo includes an explanation from Melissa Cummins in the Office of Planning & Data Governance on who came up with the coding and the intent behind it:
“In 2016, I worked on an initiative with Chief Oettmeier in which we attempted to standardize the way in which we collected data on case assignments and clearances. We created the ‘Suspended Lack of Personnel’ code to capture the number of cases with workable leads we were unable to assign due to workforce shortages. With the use of that data, our intent was to justify additional investigators and provide estimates on the number of cleared offenses required to improve operational clearance rates.”
The Independent Review Committee appointed by Houston Mayor John Whitmire issued its initial recommendations Wednesday after starting to review the Houston Police Department’s investigation into 268,920 suspended cases by its Internal Affairs Division.
The committee admits it is far too early to make broad recommendations for the entire department.
The committee met once a week over six weeks and their key preliminary findings are focused on a review of 9,167 suspended incident reports within the Special Victim’s Division (SVD). They reviewed by sampling 10 percent of the SVD’s highest priority incident reports spanning 2016 to 2024.
Preliminary Conclusion
The committee concluded in its interim report that clear written policies need to be developed that outline the protocols for case management review of incident reports to create and ensure consistency within the department.
They said a structured system of checks and balances needs to be put in place so there’s constant review and re-review of incident reports that are not being investigated because they’ve been categorized as either suspended or inactive.
To address the concerns, substantial resources, technology, personnel and an investment of infrastructure would be required, the committee said.
Preliminary Department-wide Recommendations:
- Written directives for policy changes affecting the entire department.
- Attendance protocols for all Executive Staff meetings and Command Staff meetings.
- Meeting Minutes recorded to document decision points.
- General Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for RMS and Case Management.
- Case assignment process must have reasonable/workable timelines.
- Supervisory review or chain of command approval before an investigation is suspended or made inactive.
- Simplify Records Management System offense titles ensuring they are consistent with the Texas Penal Code.
Recommendations for the Special Victims Division:
- Process to consistently review “bucketed” incident reports
- 24-hr availability of SVD investigators for incident referral or questions
- Improved coordination with victim services outside of HPD.
- Updated victim notification protocols that include input from Houston Area Women’s Center (“HAWC”).
- Mandatory HAWC administered 55-hr training for all members of SVD.
- Co-facilitated victim and trauma-centered training at the patrol level in the Academy plus a yearly refresher for all officers.
- Regarding incident reports with a final disposition of INAC – No leads, where the victim-survivor could not be located.
- When scheduling Forensic Interview with Victims, allow victim-survivor to schedule an interview at the convenience of their individual schedule. The timing of the interview shall not be solely dependent on the availability of the investigator.
There are still questions over how this Internal Affairs Division investigation started.
As KPRC 2 Investigates first reported, Executive Assistant Chief Chandra Hatcher and the letter she wrote to launch this massive investigation is now under investigation by Internal Affairs as it came to light that her claims in the letter – which bolstered former Chief Troy Finner’s statements – were inaccurate.
Hatcher claimed in writing to be at a meeting where the use of the code was discussed, only for the department to realize she was out of the city that day.
The investigation ultimately cost former Police Chief Troy Finner his job earlier this month when the mayor said revelations like the Hatcher email had become too distracting for the department and were hammering morale.