New police chief
Acevedo is a passionate administrator who has a plan for protecting Houstonians.
Houston’s police chief is still settling into a new city and a new job, but he’s already a little frustrated he hasn’t had time to fulfill what he considers one of his essential duties.
“I still haven’t had any community meetings and it’s driving me crazy,” Art Acevedo told us in an editorial board meeting last week.
Within days of his arrival in Houston, Acevedo was already articulating what he considered his top priorities as our city’s highest-ranking law enforcement officer.
Acevedo seems almost aggravated that Houston’s police body camera system requires officers to start and stop their own recordings during encounters with the public. That inevitably leads to incidents in which cameras fail to capture images of police shootings and other events that become matters of controversy. And officers rushing into potentially deadly situations requiring split-second decisions shouldn’t have to worry about pushing a button to start a camera. So the new chief wants HPD’s body cameras automatically activated anytime officers step out of their vehicles, and he’s already trying to figure out how much changing the current camera system would cost.
Still, improving the recording system won’t solve all the problems surrounding body cameras. Prosecutors have been forced to drop cases because they can’t get their hands on police videos, and journalists who’ve asked for body camera pictures have been stymied by overly restrictive rules about their release. Acevedo, concerned that publicity could prompt judges to move trials to other counties, said he’ll decide whether to release videos on a case-by-case basis. We urge the new chief to err as much as possible on the side of transparency, because keeping body camera videos under wraps — rightly or wrongly — deepens suspicions that police have something to hide.
Acevedo also plans to create an entirely new group in HPD to investigate police shootings and allegations of crimes involving officers. Right now, po- lice shootings are investigated by at least three entities: HPD’s homicide division, HPD’s internal affairs division and the civil rights division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. Acevedo intends to create an entirely new special investigations unit to focus on incidents involving police officers, staffed by people he personally selects. They’ll take over duties now assumed by homicide investigators, who already have all the work they need probing cases involving civilians.
One of the biggest challenges HPD’s likely to face in the near-term future will be an unusually large number of officers leaving the department. Acevedo notes about 600 officers were routinely expected to retire, but the department now anticipates losing 400 to 600 additional people. The new chief hopes to help fill the gap with aggressive recruiting, possibly even poaching smaller police departments for lateral hires. But it’s refreshing to hear he’s not at all worried that changes in the city’s generous benefits package area are leading a number of top administrators to retire.
The new chief sees the departure of so many longtime administrators not as a problem, but an opportunity to flatten the department’s top-heavy command staff.
Acevedo is a passionate police administrator with a gregarious intensity reminiscent of Harry Caldwell, the reform chief of the 1970s who led the department kicking and screaming into a new era of public accountability.
His candor and his determination to improve his department guarantee he’ll butt heads with entrenched interests in the police union and the police force itself.
We taxpayers are spending a fortune on law enforcement — $850 million in the city of Houston’s current fiscal budget. Now that a new chief has arrived, we urge him to examine every aspect of our police department with a fresh set of eyes and ensure citizens are getting everything they’re paying for from the men and women sworn to serve and protect our city.