Something is definitely amiss at the police department in Houston, Texas, and it’s a problem that’s been brewing since well before the border invasion began. Houston has one of the highest per capita crime rates of any city of any size in the country, but amazingly, that’s not the entirety of the problem. The Houston Police Department is investigating crimes and bringing charges as they should be, though it’s more difficult to keep up during the current era of soaring crime rates. But in the cases where they do manage to launch an investigation, roughly ten percent of those cases have been suspended without a resolution, with the department citing a “lack of personnel” as the reason for setting them aside. In the past decade, more than a quarter million cases have been suspended under this code, including more than 4,000 sexual assault investigations. What can be done about this? (Daily Wire)
Around 264,000 criminal cases, including more than 4,000 sex assault cases, have been suspended by the Houston Police Department (HPD) since 2016, citing a “lack of personnel” code, according to Houston Police Chief Troy Finner.
Finner announced on Monday that an in-depth review of the department’s use of the “lack of personnel” code over the past eight years revealed it had suspended around 10% of the 2.8 million incident reports that were filed, the Houston Chronicle reported. The Houston Police Department first revealed last week that just over 4,000 cases of alleged sexual assault had been suspended over “lack of personnel,” which sparked a closer look at how the code was used throughout all divisions of the police department.
The Chief of Police is particularly frustrated about the suspension of sexual assault investigations. He told reporters that he first learned of the use of the “lack of personnel” code in 2021 and ordered that it not be used anymore. But in too many instances, that order was ignored and many departments continued to use it anyway. Why the order was not enforced was not addressed.
Police Chief Troy Finner is venting his frustrations, but his options may be limited. The code “lack of personnel” means precisely what it sounds like. Houston’s police force has been understaffed for years. It is currently estimated that the force is roughly 2,000 short of the required number of officers. That’s a rather stunning gap in the nation’s fourth-largest city.
In the short term, the Police Chief is looking at prioritizing various types of crime differently. He claims that they will be focusing on sexual assaults, murders, and other crimes against persons over property crimes. That seems like a sensible approach, but it could also prove to be problematic when mass retail theft and looting have become increasingly common. Once the aspiring thieves realize that nobody will be hunting them down, they will only become even more brazen.
A fair amount of Houston’s problems can be traced back to the “defund the police” craze that swelled over the past decade. Some areas did literally defund the police department or at least shift resources away from direct law enforcement activity. Most didn’t reduce the budget for the police, but they also failed to grow the budget very much. That trend was taking place even as the city’s population grew from 1.9 million in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2021. During that same period, Houston’s resident-to-officer ratio grew from 334 to 461.
The sad reality is that the larger a city grows, the more criminals it will attract and the more crime will take place. With the sort of disparity in the numbers that we’re seeing in Houston today, it may not even be possible to properly investigate all of the crimes taking place without a radical policy change. Residents should force the City Council to get its priorities in order. If you can’t assure the safety of law-abiding citizens to go about their daily affairs, you don’t really have a city. You have anarchy. Some other services may need to be put on the back burner to allow for an aggressive increase in police recruitment. Abandoning 4,000 sexual assault investigations is inexcusable, and the public should demand much better.
