HPD’s dropped rape case is unacceptable
It’s time to bring in the Texas Rangers or the FBI for an outside investigation
Two years ago, a woman contacted the Houston Police Department to report that she was raped.
The woman gave the officers as much evidence as she could muster: the alleged rapist’s name, Jose Luis ReyesMartinez, as well as his address and license plate number. She agreed to go to the hospital and have physical evidence taken from her body to corroborate the assault.
She even detailed a harrowing, highly disturbing account of the incident: she had known Reyes-Martinez for a year and asked him if she could crash at his place for a night. She told the officers she fell asleep on a mat in his bedroom and woke up hours later in another room, with her clothing disheveled. She told police she had no memory of the alleged assault and that when she questioned Reyes-Martinez about what happened, he kicked her out.
Fewer than 10% of sexual assault incidents are ever reported, according to the Houston Area Women’s Center. That a woman not only had the courage to make this report to the police and provide ample details, but also allow her body to be examined in order to put her rapist behind bars, should’ve made this case a top priority for HPD investigators.
Instead, as the Chronicle’s Nicole Hensley reported, it appears police made a perfunctory effort to pursue Reyes-Martinez. Police matched the license plate number to a vehicle registered to his mother, but when they couldn’t find him they shelved the case, using the same faulty code — “suspended — lack of personnel” — that is now the subject of a sprawling internal HPD investigation involving hundreds of thousands of cases dating back eight years. That probe, which is still ongoing, has already led to HPD Chief Troy Finner demoting two assistant chiefs and a panel convened by Mayor John Whitmire to further review how the department handled the suspended cases.
Yet while the shoddy police work in this case is troubling on its own, what happened afterwards is even more disturbing. More than a year after the woman reported that Reyes-Martinez assaulted her, he was arrested for another rape. In this instance, Reyes-Martinez allegedly robbed a Fiesta Mart, escaped on bicycle, then forced his way into a home where he surprised a woman who was getting ready for work, tied up her husband and raped her. He then stole their Apple watches, jewelry and vehicle. Police tracked the vehicle using the GPS on the couple’s watch and arrested Reyes-Martinez in October. He is currently in federal custody, charged in connection with the rape and for returning to the U.S. after he was deported to Mexico in 2012.
These two sexual assaults connected to one suspect underscore the gravity of HPD’s suspended case scandal. Despite having seemingly enough evidence to at least charge Reyes-Martinez with a crime for the initial 2022 assault, HPD instead shelved the incident report and allowed him to allegedly rape another woman.
That isn’t just policing malpractice; it’s an utter failure to uphold a basic standard of protecting the public from the worst criminals. It’s horrifying. And it’s a breach of the trust we put in public servants. Two weeks ago, when we first learned of the suspended cases, we called for a truly independent state or federal investigation. An internal probe doesn’t cut it, and neither does a mayoral task force even if it is dubbed “independent.” When investigators find suspended cases that resulted in new violent crimes being committed we expect anyone responsible for this malfeasance or negligence to be held accountable and fired.
The misclassified incident reports continue to raise serious questions about the accuracy of HPD’s crime statistics, namely that the “suspended” cases were reflected as dismissals in crime data. The fact that the 2022 sexual assault report allegedly involving ReyesMartinez was not included in the National Incident Based Reporting System data that HPD typically publishes on its website adds another layer to our concern. The NIBRS data is shared with the FBI and compared with other law enforcement agencies across the nation, data that often is cited in academic studies and disseminated in public information about crime numbers. It appears increasingly possible that the faulty code was used to whitewash departmental clearance rates as well as city crime rates.
The timeline of the rape cases in question certainly puts Finner on notice. It was bad enough when Finner said he knew about the suspended cases code three years ago and only learned last month that some divisions had defied his orders to stop using it. Now that we have a concrete example of the horrific consequences that come from suspending cases that should’ve been pursued while he was chief, it’s more imperative than ever that Finner come clean with the public about who is responsible for creating this code, what he supposedly did to stop it and why certain divisions continued using it. While Finner is not solely to blame for the code’s origins — if, as he says, it dates back to 2016, former chief Art Acevedo also bears responsibility — he’ll have to show he’s taking this a lot more seriously than what we’ve seen so far. Simply demoting a couple of assistant chiefs is not what accountability looks like.
Meanwhile, Gov. Greg Abbott posted to social media that “the state must impose consequences” for the suspended cases. Rather than cynically compounding this scandal by leveraging it in a partisan battle over local control, if Abbott wants to make himself useful he could simply direct the Texas Rangers to investigate HPD’s mishandling of these cases.
Whitmire’s review panel is wellintentioned but as a new mayor who was elected in part because of his commitment to public safety, he, of course, has every reason to want this scandal to go away as quickly as possible.
During a Monday press conference, Whitmire said, “We cannot have fewer officers today than we had 25 years ago. I want this sexual assault response team, I need resources to make that be the team that Houstonians and survivors deserve.” He said he’ll do whatever it takes and alluded to lifting the revenue cap on property tax revenue. “There’s no free lunch,” he said.
Taxpayers deserve more answers they can trust before they cough up more money. That’s all the more reason for the mayor to invite the Texas Rangers or FBI to Houston to get to the bottom of this scandal.