HPD

This certainly has the potential to be a major league screw-up. How does this happen? See this from the Chron:

A review of sex crimes cases suspended with an internal code citing a lack of personnel has expanded department-wide to include more than 264,000 cases, Chief Troy Finner said Monday.

The dropped cases makes up about 10% of the department’s 2.8 million filed since 2016, Finner said. About 100,000 of those are property crimes, he wrote.

Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers Association, said he was concerned about the latest revelations. The union president said Monday at least three of the department’s division Standard Operating Procedures included directives about when to use the code to close cases.

The divisions included auto theft, vehicular crimes and major assaults and family violence, Griffith said. The major assault guidelines were signed off on by Finner Dec. 1, 2023, Griffith said.

Finner did not respond to a request for comment about the allegations as of Monday afternoon.

“I am very concerned,” Mayor John Whitmire said Monday, following Finner’s announcement. “It is unacceptable and I have instructed Chief Finner to be transparent and continue his review as a top priority. Public safety continues to be my highest priority.”

Griffith said employees were instructed they could use the code on misdemeanor cases with little solvability. He said other cases could be suspended using that code, but those could be reopened if someone reaches out to the department seeking charges, Griffith said.

Here is the entire read: Houston police dropped crime cases grow from 2,000 to 264,000 (houstonchronicle.com).

Let me remind you that the H-Town City Council last year voted to approve $1.6 billion for the Houston Police Department (HPD) budget this year. It really makes you wonder. I sure hope Chief Finner has a good explanation.

Is it a breakdown in systems or communications. Is it a bloated bureaucracy. Stay tuned for sure.

The featured photo is from Election Night this past December.

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This is not a good look for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. See this from the Landing:

Harris County Commissioners Court on Tuesday will consider replacing County Judge Lina Hidalgo on the board of the Houston-Galveston Area Council after she missed more than 50 consecutive meetings of the regional planning body over the past four and a half years.

The council, known as H-GAC, is responsible for distributing millions of dollars in federal funding for transportation and other projects across the region. 

Its board of directors has 37 members representing 13 counties, 107 cities and 11 independent school districts. Though Houston and Harris County account for 57 percent of the region’s population, each has only two seats on the board.

The council has been embroiled in a dispute over whether the city and county should have more representatives on the board.

Houston voters last November approved a charter amendment known as Proposition B, which aimed to increase the city’s voting power on the regional planning organization. The proposition, which passed with 65 percent of the vote, requires the city to participate in regional planning organizations like H-GAC only if its voting privileges are proportional to its population.

The city had a 60-day deadline after the proposition passed to renegotiate its voting power but did not meet the cutoff. Initially, the city was supposed to withdraw from the organization if an agreement could not be reached but the advocates who pushed for the change said they were happy with  ongoing conversations between Houston and H-GAC officials. 

Here is the entire Landing read: Harris County to replace Lina Hidalgo on H-GAC board (houstonlanding.org).

Not a good look for sure. What took them so long to make the move. Oh, well.

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GOP State Rep. Ernest Bailes represents the Texas House of Representatives District 18 which includes Liberty and Cleveland, Texas. Liberty and Cleveland watch H-Town TV broadcast stations like KPRC-TV Channel 2.  Rep. Bailes is anti-voucher. Arsehole Gov. Greg Abbott is spending a lot of his campaign dough trying to oust Bailes. There is an anti-Bailes ad running on Channel 2 saying Bailes is weak on border security. You know that must be a lie.

I am just a fella in Houston Heights watching an ad about a race in Liberty, Texas. GOP candidates are certainly spending a ton of dough in legislative races throughout the state.

All I can say is that most GOPers bought into the Donald Trump way of politics and Abbott is practicing it against his own GOP. They all deserve each other.

Election Night for the Texas primaries is one week from tonight. Go vote early, please.