Did HPD neglect ‘suspended’ cases? We asked 24 crime victims about their experience.

As Valerie Hill tried to physically stop her landlord’s son from entering an occupied bathroom at her Kashmere Gardens group home, the 30-year-old man wheeled around and punched her in the chest.

Hill called 911 to report the assault and Houston Police Department officers quickly arrived at the scene, but handcuffs never came out. Instead, Hill overheard the officers talk about taking the man, who she said has a documented history of mental illness, to a nearby restaurant to cool off.

Seven months after the May 2023, assault, Houston police classified the incident as “suspended – lack of personnel,” an internal label placed on tens of thousands of incidents over the past decade. The classification perplexed Hill, who felt the matter had been long settled.

“I don’t want to press charges anymore,” Hill said earlier this month. “I feel sorry for the guy.”

Since disclosing in February that the department had classified about 264,000 incidents as “suspended – lack of personnel,” triggering an internal investigation and audit that has clouded Mayor John Whitmire’s first few months in office, HPD officials have provided limited information about how it handled cases like Hill’s assault.

Did police truly fail to investigate known leads and arrest suspects? Did officers follow all available leads before giving up when they hit a natural dead-end? Did officers improperly classify numerous cases as suspended?

However, HPD leaders didn’t clarify whether local forensics officials had previously notified detectives of the DNA matches in those cases, or whether the matches were found as part of the “suspended” cases review. HPD officials also said about half of those cases had already resulted in an arrest, or involved a complainant who couldn’t be found or didn’t want to cooperate with police.

The Houston Area Women’s Center said in a February statement that the “suspended” adult sexual assault reports were indicative of “system failure in the fourth-largest city in the nation.”

“For a survivor to find the courage to come forward and report their attack, and then to wait and watch as their case gets suspended can add immeasurable trauma,” the sexual assault resource center said.

Too little, too late?

Finner, who became chief in April 2021, has said that he first learned his officers were using the designation in November 2021 and directed them to stop. However, Finner said he learned in early February that officers were still using the classification, leading him to order an immediate review of reports.

Finner has not commented on a letter ABC13 obtained earlier this month in which an unidentified sergeant described how the classification was created in 2016 as a way 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 sergeant wrote.

Finner said an internal affairs investigation into who created the code and why they created it should be completed by the end of April.

Whitmire has formed an independent review panel tasked with looking over HPD’s shoulder. Its directives include analyzing HPD data to identify trends and patterns in the “suspended” reports; reviewing department policies and practices that led to use of the code; and reviewing whether law enforcement actions were deficient.

Whitmire has also tasked the panel with issuing a final report proposing actions that “will ensure every incident report that is received by HPD is properly reviewed, investigated and properly addressed,” according to a memorandum addressed to Houston City Council.

But for some, that’s too little, too late.

Michael Johnson said two HPD officers recently came by his house to ask if he still wanted to pursue an assault charge against an unknown woman who he said pulled a gun on him in August. Johnson said yes, only to later throw the report number they gave him in the trash, angered by the amount of time that had passed.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said.