The Houston Police Department is trying to contact thousands of sexual assault victims whose cases were suspended because of what the former police chief says was a "bad policy." The policy allowed officers to classify investigations improperly because of staffing issues, effectively halting more than 260,000, including over 4,000 reported rapes, former interim police Chief Larry Satterwhite told city leaders, USA Today reports. The policy, implemented in 2016, affected "real victims" and that the police are "not running from anything," Satterwhite told Houston Mayor John Whitmire and the city council. "Where we made mistakes, where we failed, we're going to tell you," Satterwhite said. Houston police released a report about how the policy began, how it affected cases and what the department is doing to solve the issue.
The department's Special Victims Division used an "SL" code, meaning “Suspended-Lack of Personnel," for 9,012 cases, while the Homicide division inputted the "SL" code for 6,537 cases. Houston police did not know how often the code was being used until Sept. 9, 2023, when officers responded to a robbery at a grocery store, Satterwhite said. The suspect in the case had robbed the grocery store, but by the time officers arrived, he had fled into a nearby neighborhood, broke into a home, tied up a man and sexually assaulted his wife as the couple's children slept. As police investigated the rape, detectives learned that the physical evidence left behind by the suspect at the scene matched evidence collected from a sexual assault kit in September 2022. When police went to look up the case from 2022, they saw that the "SL" code was inputted although the victim gave the officers her offender's description, name and vehicle.
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