“Disappearing” crime in houston: pd, under one of the usual suspects, hid hundreds of thousands of crime reports, so they would not be investigated or counted
By N.S.
“Houston mayor says police chief is out amid probe into thousands of dropped cases
“mayor John Whitmire said he did not push out former police chief Troy Finner but accepted his retirement as the police department needed to move forward under new leadership.”
“Whitmire, who took office in january, had expressed confidence in Finner after the chief revealed in february that more than 264,000 incident reports in the past eight years were never submitted for investigation as officers assigned them an internal code that cited a lack of available personnel.
“Finner had said he ordered his command staff in a november 2021 meeting to stop using it after learning of its existence. despite this, he said, he learned on feb. 7 of this year that it was still being used to dismiss a significant number of adult sexual assault cases.
“Whitmire’s confidence in Finner seemed to quickly end this week after Houston television stations reported tuesday that Finner had been informed about the dismissed incident reports in a 2018 email.”
Hidden among the 264,000 hidden incident reports were “4,000 sexual assault allegations.” The philly p.d. became infamous for its “disappearing” of rapes by “unfounding” them. Simply hiding the initial reports saves the work of “unfounding” them.
N.S. bibliography on “disappearing crime” in nyc, philly, chicago, dallas, etc.
“Houston mayor John Whitmire and police chief Troy Finner at a news conference in Houston on march 11” [2024]“Finner said the investigation, expected to be completed by the end of the month [April, 2024], will provide answers to who created the internal code and why officers continued to use it even after he ordered his command staff in november 2021 to stop using it after learning of its existence. Finner said he learned on feb. 7 that the code was still being used, prompting the probe.
“the code, part of the department’s record management system, was created in 2016, years before Finner became chief in april 2021….”
“last month mayor John Whitmire announced the creation of an independent panel to review police handling of the dropped incident reports.
“‘I am confident in the process. I have confidence in chief Finner, who wants to resolve this as much as anyone that can hear my voice,’ Whitmire said wednesday. ‘he’s begun the process of reviewing it. he’s going to give a report, and then there will be accountability for all of us. “two assistant chiefs have already been demoted over their roles in the matter. [N.S.: Who?!]
“Finner said officers have reviewed 81,650 of the 264,000 suspended incident reports. About 26,000 of them should have been suspended but under a different internal code related to a lack of leads, arrest by a patrol officer or arrest by emergency detention order.”
[ https://apnews.com/article/houston-police-dropped-cases-65f52a7429d89b7eb423e19858aeca36>“Houston police reviewing if dna tests could have helped in thousands of dropped cases,” by Juan A. Lozano, associated press, April 11, 2024.]
“Houston mayor says police chief is out amid probe into thousands of dropped cases
“Mayor John Whitmire said he did not push out former Police Chief Troy Finner but accepted his retirement as the police department needed to move forward under new leadership.”
By Ken Miller and Juan A. Lozano, associated press, May 8, 2024
“Whitmire, who took office in January, had expressed confidence in Finner after the chief revealed in February that more than 264,000 incident reports in the past eight years were never submitted for investigation as officers assigned them an internal code that cited a lack of available personnel….
[N.S.: And if you believe that, I have a great deal for you on a slightly used bridge.]
“‘the bottom line is the department is being distracted due to issues with the investigation ... from its primary mission of fighting crime,’ Whitmire told city council members. he appointed assistant chief Larry Satterwhite as acting chief.
“in a late wednesday afternoon post on the social platform x, Finner did not address his sudden retirement. he called the last few months of his career ‘the most challenging’ and ‘painful’ because ‘some victims of violent crime did not receive the quality care and service they deserved.
“‘but, it was beneficial because we implemented measures to ensure this never happens again,’ Finner said on the platform formerly known as twitter. ‘our department and our profession will be better because of it.’”
With the Houston pd’s trick, it “reduced” crime in Houston by anywhere from 4% to 21%, depending on your favorite, fakestat source (see below).
What measures might those have been, that were implemented to prevent recurrences of the police crimes? None at all!
For eight years straight (2016-2023), the Houston pd was home to a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. Note the symmetry: 33,000 felonies per year, for eight years running! How do I know they were felonies? Because nobody cares about misdemeanors. And the fact that throughout the department, officers were using the same internal code, tells you that the conspiracy was department-wide.
Here’s the sort of measures that ensure that such corruption will not soon be repeated: 1. You fire every cop who used the code, and identify each by name; and
2. You prosecute every cop who used the code.
What did Houston and Harris county do? Nothing!
I tried in vain to determine what percentage of felonies in Houston the police department was disappearing. The official state stats led down a blind alley.
In such situations, I used to rely on the FBI/DOJ’s Bureau of Crime Statistics, but the feds appear to have eliminated it. So, while I hate to rely on google, (initially) I had no choice.
“What city in texas has the highest violent crime rate?
“Houston
“Houston: the major city of Houston, which is largely considered the city with the highest crime rate in the entire state, has had a 3.2% increase in crime between 2019 and 2023. In 2019, a study from the FBI reported over 25,000 violent crimes in Houston that year alone. The city currently has a crime index of 3,419.nov 27, 2024”
google: “in 2021, the Houston Police Department reported a total of 25,824 violent crimes and 97,452 property crimes within city limits. [N.S.: That’s funny, because according to one table within the doj’s crime data explorer (CDE), Houston had 132,461 violent crimes in 2021.]
“here is a breakdown of the major crime categories for Houston in 2021:
• “Violent Crimes: 25,824 total reported incidents.
◦ “Murders (Homicides): 441 reported cases (some other sources cite 477).
◦ “Robberies: 7,744 reported cases.
• “Property Crimes: 97,452 total reported cases.”
Meanwhile, Table 8 at the doj.gov (Table_8_Offenses_Known_to_Law_Enforcement_by_State_by_City_.xlsx) cites only 28,325 “violent crimes,” but breaks them down, such that they are all felonies (“murder or non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault”) and 96,048 “property crimes.” (So, what about the other doj table showing 132,461 violent crimes and 634,393 property crimes in Houston for the year of 2021? One possibility is that the higher number contained both misdemeanors and felonies. Another possibility is that these are all funny numbers, and that the Houston pd couldn’t be bothered to get its lies straight.) However, while the property crimes are broken down as “burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft,” and “arson,” those are not necessarily all felonies.
However, when you look at Houston’s fake stats, the Houston pd skimmed 33,000 off the top, which were surely all felonies, thereby reducing its crime rate by anywhere from 4% (out of 800,000 total crimes) to 21% (out of 157,000 total crimes).
Whatever the real crime numbers were in Houston in 2021, given that it has an official census of 2,387,910 “residents,” and is majority hispanic (45.5%) and black (24.7%), the higher numbers have to be closer to the truth than the lower ones.
Keep in mind that the national crime victimization survey has always shown the crime rate to be at least twice as high as the official rate, and as America’s cities fill up with ever more “immigrants” from countries with corrupt policemen, and the practice of not reporting crime to them (on top of the fact that these people are already foreign criminals), with time, that discrepancy will just grow wider and wider.
