Why are these Houston Police Officers still on the street?

Houston, Texas

Ten Houston Police Department officers have amassed 370 violations of HPD regulations over their careers, a laundry list of major and minor complaints that critics say illustrate how police can make mistakes repeatedly and still not lose their jobs.

The complaints include failing to investigate a suspected child rape, skipping court testimony and causing a drug case to be dismissed, wrecking dozens of police and private cars, writing hot checks, refusing to answer internal affairs investigators and detaining innocent residents.

The 10 officers - nine of whom are still active and one who resigned under investigation last year - have the most violations logged on an HPD Internal Affairs database of complaints sustained by police investigators. One officer has 47 sustained complaints against him alone. Another has 44.

The disciplinary actions for the complaints are detailed in more than 1,100 pages of city records obtained recently through an open records request.

Those punished include one veteran officer who ran unauthorized criminal checks on acquaintances, and who went through a department car wash with a bean-bag shotgun on a police cruiser's roof. The gun case was damaged when it was run over by the next cruiser in line.

The disciplinary files of the 10 officers show that four had conduct and a history of complaints severe enough for the police chief to attempt to fire them, but they were able to keep their jobs because of civil service and police union provisions that allow the chief to negotiate a lesser punishment through a "last chance agreement."

Independent hearing examiners often overturn firings on appeal, as they did with four of eight officers Chief Charles McClelland fired last year.

Critics are concerned by the high number of sustained complaints among the officers, adding that HPD's complaints process takes too long and problem officers are not weeded out.

Criminal justice professor Larry Hoover said HPD's disciplinary system of gradually imposing more severe suspensions, coupled with the ability of an officer to appeal a firing to an arbitrator, makes it hard to get rid of bad officers.

"That practice is almost unheard-of in every occupation except public safety, police and fire," said Hoover, who is on the faculty at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. "The fact that the option exists leads to officers being inappropriately retained in the department, when they should be fired."

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