There Are No Words For What HPD Officials Did To These Rape Victims

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The Michael Barry Show and update tothe Houston Police Department scandal. Oligas is
the worst scandal since I've been followingHPD for thirty five years. Way worse

(00:20):
than even the Hardy Street raid,which was a terrible, terrible shame,
because this involves people at the top, and it has many more victims.

(00:44):
Kho used. Jeremy Rogowski, afine journalist in this community for decades,
finds that in at least twenty sixcases where a HPD suspended the cases over
lack of personnelity, we just missedthat case. Just make that case go

(01:07):
away. We're not gonna investigate.We're not gonna do that. In at
least twenty six of those cases,the victim actually knew the suspect and even
gave police the suspect's name. Shewas raped by a neighbor, a friend's

(01:30):
brother, a coworker. She gavethat to police. They know the suspect,
and they threw it in the trashand said, clear that case,

(01:51):
we don't have enough people. Ata time when they were spending forty million
dollars on murals and street art akagraffiti and trash, but they couldn't spend
the money to investigate rape cases wherethe victim said I know who raped me.

(02:20):
I was looking him in the eye. Yeah, we just really don't
have the energy or you know,people to investigate. But thanks for the
call. Thanks for the call.Don't call us, We'll call you number
one. Khou. Oh it's aslam dunk case. That's what Grant Farley

(02:43):
thought two and a half years agoafter he met his boss at this bar
in the Heights and says a businessdispute turned into a violent attack with a
broken beer mark. But then hepicks up the sharded glass and lunges from
my face and I raised my handsup in defense. We got stabbed and
went to the er for stitches andthen filed a report with HPD. I

(03:05):
provided his name, his address,his birthday, his place of business.
I knew there is video evidence hereat the bar, but despite having that
info, Houston Police suspended the casefor lack of personnel. Frustrated, extremely
frustrated. They just charged Joshua Nerriswith aggravated assault two weeks ago. K

(03:27):
two eleven investigates discovered it's one ofthirty charges that were filed since mid February
when the suspended case scandal broke innearly all eighty seven percent record show police
had a suspect's name. There's AdrianGarcia Junior, now charged with assaulting his
pregnant girlfriend, even though last Mayshe originally told police she knows him by

(03:49):
name in sight when he allegedly kickedher in the stomach, but HPD suspended
the case for lack of personnel.Or there's Pablo Martinez. Police knew he
was a suspect last October because thevictim was his wife and cops were even
flagged down by a witness and thatincident, HPD suspended the case the very

(04:10):
next day, Chief, is thatacceptable? I'll be the first to tell
you it's not acceptable. We alsofound several suspended cases in which the known
suspect was not arrested and went onto get charged with another crime, like
Keyanti Deson. Police had his namein photo last February after he allegedly took
a woman's car with her child andbelongings inside. HPD shelved the case.

(04:35):
Decent remained out on the street,and about a year later was charged with
doing the same thing to another woman, taking her belongings and her children.
Away. It should frustrate everybody.It really should, and as I said,
stated numerous the times, we wantto make sure we clean it up
and we fix it and make surethis doesn't happen again. Wow. Imagine

(05:02):
if when you get pulled over formaking a mistake, you could just say,
yeah, you know what, you'reright, you're right. Let's make
sure I never do this again.But no consequences, no consequences. We

(05:25):
have a mayor who ran for officeand was elected by people who wanted the
city cleaned up. And if hedoesn't change the tone, the clock is
ticking. Two weeks ago, JohnWhipmeer said Houston is broke. Sylvester Turner

(05:47):
left us broke. Now he says, hey, let's spend three billion dollars
to make Houston a destination by raisingthe hotel occupancy tax. It's called the
hot or the hot tax, whichis a bit repetitive, but it makes
more sense. It's easier, whichends up being a slush fund for the

(06:08):
mayor when you impose this tax.And I haven't looked at the tax fifteen
years since I left city Hall,but I can tell you that we had
the highest hotel occupancy tax in thecountry by far. For every hotel room
that someone booked in our city atthe time, the fee tacked on that

(06:30):
the city would keep was higher thaneveryone else in multiples. It was higher
than Orlando that was making a bigpush to be a convention destination. It
was higher than Vegas that dominates theindustry. It was higher than New York.
There is an elastic demand for thehotel occupancy tax. Now, the

(06:57):
reason you do that, and I'lltell you what's going on here. The
reason you do that is because thepeople who just voted for you, they're
not staying in the hotels, sothey don't notice that you're taxing people who
are coming here to visit. Soyou may say, oh, that's great.
That's like, why don't we dowhat little towns do. Everybody in

(07:19):
the little town gets a sticker thatsays, I am a resident of town.
Ex we love living here. Yayhippie, here's a smiley face.
We have civic pride. Well,the reason for those little stickers is not
for civic pride. The reason forthe sticker is the cop knows don't ticket
you, well, so the copswill ticket outsiders foreigners as they're known in

(07:46):
public policy terms. People that don'tlive there, that can't vote against the
police chief or the city council orthe sheriff or whatever else. So you
put tickets on people who are cominginto the community, and it doesn't take
long until the word gets out,don't drive through south Side Place because they
play silly little games and pay fortheir their they pay for their city police

(08:09):
by sitting on a road that's noteven really much a part of their residential
community, which is bel Air slashHolcombe. That's why you see them right
there in that little intersection at Holcombeand Hulcomb, which becomes bel Air right
there in ctell a Link which becomesWesleyan, and you go one block east

(08:30):
and they tuck under a tree inthe middle of the esplanade right there and
they just nail people that don't havetheir south Side Place stickers on. Well,
if that's what, if that's oneof the ways that we're going to
raise more money to deal with allthe problems here. It's going to me
that you're going to get few pureconvention. They're about to raise your taxes.

(08:54):
They're going to try to blow openthe tax cap. They're going to
raise the taxes on the convention It'scoming. If you like the Michael Berry
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(09:18):
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(09:48):
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(10:09):
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