HOUSTON — Houston Police Department Assistant Chief Ernest Garcia and HPD Assistant Chief Kevin Deese were demoted as a result of the suspension of thousands of cases and incident reports since 2016, according to the Houston Police Officers' Union.
It's unclear what role Deese and Garcia played in the suspension of the cases and it's also unknown what their new titles are.
Before their demotions, the HPD organizational chart showed that Deese was the head of the Criminal Investigations Command and oversaw homicide, major assaults and special victims (among others). Garcia was the head of the Organizational Development Command, overseeing employee services, recruiting and training.
Suspended cases
About two weeks ago, HPD announced that it was going to review thousands of sexual assault cases that had been suspended due to a department code.
That code, which referenced a "lack of personnel," was supposed to stop being used, but according to Chief Troy Finner, it continued to be used by multiple departments.
"Sexual assaults are some of the most traumatic crimes for victims and their families," Finner said in a statement on Feb. 16. "Regardless of staffing challenges, this should have never happened and will not continue. All victims and their families are important to me and deserve to be treated as such."
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Earlier this week it was revealed that every department used the "due to lack of personnel" code since 2016.
"We determined that department-wide approximately 264,000 such incident reports since 2016 were suspended with this code," Finner said. "That figure represents about 10% of the 2.8 million incident reports filed with HPD in the past eight years. Of those 264,000 reports, about 100,000 of them are property crimes."
The suspended sex assault reports first came to light in mid-February when Finner posted to social media about a "significant number" of cases that were suspended. At the time, he called the situation unacceptable.
About a week later, Finner held a news conference and explained that as many as 4,017 reported sexual assaults had been "suspended due to lack of personnel." Some of the reported crimes went as far back as 2016.
Finner claimed he first heard about the code in November 2021, the same year he became chief, and he asked HPD's Special Victims' Division to stop using it, however, he learned this year, that the code continued to be used.