Houston Police Department suspension of rape investigations despite DNA evidence drawing fire
HOUSTON - The narrative suggesting most of the quarter million cases abandoned by the Houston Police Department lacked workable leads or evidence has taken a major hit with the revelation that nearly 100 rape investigations were dropped despite DNA evidence linking actual suspects to the crime.
"It's a failure of the highest order to have this information that you can act upon to make our community safer and nothing is being done with it," said Julian Ramiez, a former prosecutor now serving on Houston City Council.
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Ramirez was reacting to perhaps the most troubling revelation to emerge from the HPD case shelving scandal thus far - an announcement by Chief Troy Finner that at least 96 rape allegations lodged by victims were never investigated despite the presence in each case of DNA evidence linking the sexual assaults to a previously arrested suspect.
"We know who they are. It's actionable information. We could probably go to a judge right now and get a warrant sworn out to pick them up and this information was sitting in a drawer somewhere. We are not talking about simple numbers anymore. We are talking about names, identities that we can act upon," said Ramirez.
This latest revelation has left victim advocates seething and openly asking how many serial predators were allowed to assault additional targets because HPD chose not to investigate crimes despite substantial evidence.
"We hear from survivors all the time. They just want justice. Put the perpetrator behind bars. To hear that nothing happened and that these cases went stagnant, these fool-proof, DNA-evidenced cases, nothing happened, and more victims are out there, perhaps? It's unthinkable, unbelievable," said Chau Nguyen, who counsels victims of sexual assault at Houston's Forensic Center of Excellence.
"I Iook multiple times every day. I look at bookings and I look specifically for felonies, and for years I was always troubled and kind of perplexed. I very rarely ever saw any sexual assault cases, but I knew they were there out there, but I'm going in and never ever see them booked. Now I know why, because we really weren't looking for them," said Andy Kahan, victim advocate with Crime Stoppers of Houston.
Both Kahan and Nguyen fear it will take years and proof-of-performance for HPD to rebuild damaged public trust.
