HOUSTON – On the heels of the Houston Police Chief’s latest news conference on the deactivated sexual assault cases, KPRC 2 Investigates has learned the code to suspend cases continued to be used as recently as Feb. 25.
Chief Troy Finner instructed his officers to stop using the suspended code commonly referred to as “SL” within the department on Feb. 22.
KPRC 2 Investigates reviewed data showing the “SL” code was used 44 times after the chief’s news conference. That’s according to data obtained through a Texas Public Information Act request last month.
“That code was put into effect in 2016, it will not be used again in my administration. It was unacceptable then, it’s unacceptable now,” Finner said on Feb. 22.
The Vehicular Crimes Division was the department that used the code 44 times.
We called the Houston Police Department to get a comment on the 44 cases, and a spokesperson said, “We addressed everything today at the press conference.”
During that press conference, Chief Finner stated that the codes align with incident reports, “not the number of investigative cases.”
“For example, if someone breaks into your car, there’s no evidence, no video. So that incident report will not be assigned to an investigator,” said Finner.
Some incident reports are filed for insurance or civil lawsuit purposes, according to Finner, who says the review will include properly labeling these reports.
“We do not, and I want to stress on it, do not have the staffing to investigate every incident. However, violent crimes against persons must be the priority,” said Finner.
While KPRC 2 Investigates is continuing to comb over the document containing 265,651 cases, it doesn’t appear the code was used after the chief sent out a memo department-wide to stop using the “SL” code immediately and was read during role calls for the following five days.