Houston Police trying to contact victims after 4,017 sexual assault cases were shelved, chief says

Associated Press

Houston’s interim police chief says a lack of communication from department leaders made it possible for officers to drop more than 264,000 cases. More than 4,000 sexual assault cases and two homicides were among the cases shelved. Interim Chief Larry Satterwhite told the Houston City Council Wednesday that a code adopted in 2016 was supposed to identify why a case was dropped. But leaders never shared an operating procedure. So officers acting without guidance from above used the code for lacking personnel to justify their decisions to stop investigating all manner of crimes, even when violence was involved.