20,000 criminal cases not investigated in 2013 by HPD City study of 2013 crimes indicates many probes had viable leads but were hurt by personnel shortages

The Houston Police Department, already reeling from a scandal involving shoddy work in its homicide unit, was dealt another blow Monday when a report revealed that some 20,000 burglary, theft, assault and hit-and-run cases with workable leads were not investigated in 2013.

The authors of the city-commissioned study surveyed HPD division commanders who revealed "excessively high numbers of cases with leads that were not investigated in 2013 due to a lack of personnel."

The report noted that 15,000 burglaries and thefts, 3,000 assaults and nearly 3,000 hit-and-runs were not investigated last year. The data was based on monthly HPD management reports of cases with workable leads.

The study's findings arrived at a critical time for HPD. The Houston Chronicle on Sunday reported on almost two dozen homicide cases dating back a decade that were barely investigated by HPD detectives. That scandal erupted earlier in the year when eight detectives were disciplined for their lack of work on the cases.

HPD Chief Charles McClelland had not completed reading the new 200-page study late Monday, but is expected to comment in the next day or two, said spokesman John Cannon.

Meanwhile, community activists, policing experts and some council members were stunned at the thousands of unworked cases. Councilman Michael Kubosh said he was alarmed as he reviewed the staffing study last weekend and the Chronicle report on homicides.

"I mean it's like, 'Good God Almighty, don't tell the criminals this,'" Kubosh said.

Amin Alehashem, staff attorney for the Texas Civil Right Project in Houston, called for a comprehensive review of how HPD manages its resources.

"This is unconscionable in a lot of ways," Alehashem said. "Twenty-thousand-plus cases that could be solved that are just sitting there because of a lack of manpower. Coming on the heels of the recent disclosure that a number of homicide cases were falling between the cracks, if you read between the lines there, it's not entirely surprising to realize that thousands of other type cases are also not being investigated."

Public safety concerns

The $150,000 study released Monday was conducted by the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum and Justex Systems Inc., a consulting firm co-directed by Larry Hoover, a professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University.

It was requested by City Councilman and former HPD Chief C.O. Bradford in July 2010, but was delayed by the city's recent budget shortage.

"When we have tens of thousands of cases with solvability factors, with leads, where suspects could be arrested, that simply shouldn't be happening in the city," Bradford said. "I am not shocked, because we don't have the personnel to do it." Bradford said he favors hiring 1,500 new officers, but said 800 - at a cost of $80 million - would be a starting point. HPD currently has 5,100 officers

Mayor Annise Parker said her administration has taken a number of steps to have more of the city's officers investigating crimes, but added that "massive" funding is on the horizon.

"We investigate everything we have the capacity to investigate," Parker said. "We need more police officers. The only way we can have more police officers is to have more tax revenue to pay for them. We have done an extraordinarily good job of utilizing every resource, putting more officers back on the street, doing all these really innovative things to maximize it, but ultimately, that's just kept us treading water."

The report was presented Monday at a meeting of the city's public safety and homeland security committee led by Councilman Ed Gonzalez, who said the analysis is a good tool to determine the coming budget for public safety.

"At the end of the day, public safety has to be the No. 1 priority," Gonzalez said. "You almost start from what are HPD's budget needs and then from there you consider HFD (fire department) as well."

The report described the problem in the burglary and theft division as "egregious," and recommended adding 27 investigators in that department.

When asked if HPD should scramble every available officer on the unworked cases, Executive Assistant Chief Timothy Oettmeier said the department had been using overtime to catch up on hit-and-runs and has been mailing questionnaires to assault victims to get additional information.

He said more officers would be needed to attack the 15,000 burglary and theft cases not investigated last year.

"The burglary and theft cases, that is more labor-intensive, that will take additional resources," Oettmeier said. "I'll be honest with you, we're stretched pretty thin right now as is. I don't want to minimize the importance of those cases, but those are at the lower rung, so we just have to use the resources we have on the more egregious cases."

'Got to do something'

Ray Hunt, president of the Houston Police Officers' Union, told the security committee that to achieve the full staffing recommendations made in the report the city would have to hire 1,500 new officers.

"And I hope that's your takeaway: that this department needs at least 1,500 officers just to keep the status quo where we are," Hunt said. "And that does not take into account the 200 officers per year we lose from attrition."

City Council member Ellen Cohen said she has long felt that upping enrollment in cadet classes was the most important action council could take.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to say, 'Wait a minute, Houston's growing this quick, and we're not replacing, at this level, our law enforcement officers, so we've got to do something,'" Cohen said.

Researchers stressed their report did not recommend a specific number of new personnel, but provided city officials a set of options to improve performance. "It is important to note that there are no standard levels for patrol or investigations. Each police department makes its own decisions about how it deploys resources," the report said.

Overall, it would take 1,508 additional officers, including 1,383 in patrol, 24 additional officers at the city's two airports and 101 more criminal investigators to accomplish a number of benchmarks such as increasing response time to emergency calls, according to the study.

Hunt, the union president, encouraged council members to support the highest level of manpower increases discussed in the study, adding they represented a "cry for help," from residents who are victims of crime.

He noted the authors ranked Houston, with 9.9 violent crimes per 1,000 residents, as having the highest rate of violent crime among major Texas cities.