Hello Friends. I am so proud to be your mayor, and over the last three months, I have enjoyed visiting with people throughout the city. Recently, I had an opportunity to wish a Happy Norouz to the Persian community and attend the 25th annual Ramadan Dinner, where so many Houstonians warmly welcomed me. Thank you for your encouragement and friendship, and I look forward to seeing you and participating in more events.
When I campaigned for mayor, I told Houstonians that public safety was my top priority. In my first few months in office, I have stayed true to my word. I am working on making our city safer for everyone by supporting our Houston Police and Fire Departments.
By now, you know that I have appointed an Independent Review Committee to help oversee and validate HPD’s investigation into thousands of suspended incident reports, including sexual assault and property crimes.
Police Chief Troy Finner confirmed that the department identified 264,000 incident reports that have been suspended due to “lack of personnel,” something that should never have happened due to manpower shortages.
The committee’s respected and experienced members include former Women’s Center CEO Ellen Cohen, Texas Ranger Captain Jeff Owles, Deputy Inspector General Christina Nowak, City Attorney Arturo Michel, and strong community advocate Rev. Leon Preston.
They will meet regularly to comprehensively review the department’s policies that contributed to the suspended cases, analyze data and processes to identify trends and patterns in the suspended cases, review individual incident reports and corresponding case files, and conduct interviews to determine the timelines of suspended cases.
I recently joined with the Houston firefighters union to announce a historic settlement to end more than eight years of lawsuits and our heroes’ working without a contract. We have signed an agreement to give firefighters $650 million in back pay and up to 34% in raises over the next five years. Without this agreement, the City of Houston taxpayers could have been forced to foot the bill for over $1 billion.
Let’s continue to support and pray for our first responders.
We’re all in this together, and the eyes of Houston are upon us.
