Outrage in Houston After Police Audit Reveals 260,000 Crimes Not Investigated

Houston police find a human smuggling stash house on the city's far southwest side after n
File Photo: Houston Police Department
Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby

Politicians and law enforcement figures in Houston are dealing with the massive blowback after an audit revealed that for at least eight years, authorities had “suspended” and not investigated more than 260,000 criminal cases. Officials say a lack of manpower led to the suspension of about 10 percent of the crimes reported. The revelations led to various groups calling for the firing of Houston Police Chief Troy Finner.

The issue first began earlier this month when information from an internal audit revealed that thousands of sexual assault cases had been suspended from investigations and simply filed as not enough manpower.

Last week, Finner held a news conference where he announced the result of an audit that revealed that since 2016, there had been 4,017 sexual assault cases that his department had failed to investigate. In the aftermath of that initial revelation, Finner claimed to have assigned 32 investigators to the sexual crimes division as they work to reopen those cases.

Breitbart Texas’ Bob Price joined the Fox 26 Houston What’s Your Point with Greg Groogan talk show on Sunday to discuss the issue of the more than 4,000 sexual assault investigations that were found to be suspended in the audit:

“This is indicative of a nationwide effort to defund police, which has led to people not wanting to be police officers anymore,” Price said. “The numbers are way down nationwide for officers, whether it’s in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and here in Houston. It’s just obscene, the lack of available resources for cases like this that are extremely important to the survivors of these attacks.”

The scandal over the suspended investigations worsened this week when Finner announced that since 2016, his department had suspended more than 264,000 cases, or 10 percent of all the crimes committed in Houston during that time frame. The statement revealed that of the total, about 100,000 of those crimes were property crimes.

Finner revealed that additional information would be revealed in the coming days during a news conference.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 

Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.     

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