HOUSTON -- More than 100 law enforcement officers from across the state raced to Houston on Thursday to assist a department that is strapped by resources and failed to fully mobilize until after Hurricane Beryl struck the region.
The state of Texas is paying for the officers to work shifts in Houston as it recovers from the storm, Acting Chief Larry Satterwhite said. The 100 new officers are joining 80 from the Texas Department of Public Safety who were already in town. The reinforcements hail from city's ranging from Dallas to San Antonio, and will be using vehicles from their departments. The new officers will be accompanied by one HPD officer per vehicle, Satterwhite said.
"We wouldn't be having this discussion if we had electricity," Mayor John Whitmire said, citing the 2.3 million residents who lost power after the storm.Whitmire said the additional officers would relieve Houston police who have been working 12-hour shifts since the department fully mobilized Tuesday morning. They would also handle some traffic patrols since more than 1,400 lights remained without electricity across Houston, Whitmire said.
Beryl is the second natural disasters the administration has faced since Whitmire took office in January. A surprise derecho storm of rain and wind in May pulled glass from buildings downtown, uprooted thousands of threes and cut power for hundreds of thousands of customers. In this case, forecasters had been warning for nearly a week that Beryl could bring wind and rain to the region, and each forecast showed the track moving closer to Houston. In this case, the new mayor and an acting police chief were left to prepare the city for the storm after Chief Troy Finner abruptly retired in May.
The Houston Police Department's nearly 6,000 employees didn't fully mobilize until early Tuesday, almost 24 hours after the storm first battered the Houston region.
"The department got short-sighted with this mobilization and no electricity for more than 1 million people," said Domingo Garcia, a former Houston police officer who retired last month. "They are standing on pins and needles right now."
Unlike other recent storms including Hurricane Harvey in 2017, HPD's leaders opted not to fully mobilize until Tuesday, more than 24 hours after Hurricane Beryl battered the Houston region. This meant officers were working regular shifts, and not as many were pre-staged ahead of the storm as for Harvey.
"Yes, if I knew it was going to be a direct impact, where I'm confident in the roll of the bones, we would have probably had more people," Satterwhite said. "But the reality is we're going off the information we have."
As part of HPD's mobilization, detectives have been pulled from investigations and reassigned to assist in the disaster relief. Satterwhite said they are currently positioned around critical infrastructure, high-value crime targets like guns and pawn shops and pharmacies.
"They're doing a different job as opposed to investigations right now," Satterwhite said. "They're doing investigations too, but I don't want to paint the picture that they're steadily in their offices doing follow up investigations. Right now we are still, in our mind, in response recovery."
As part of the mobilization, the Houston Police Department leaders have divided the 5,200 officers into two shifts, one during the day and one at night, to patrol the city and help with storm recovery efforts. Satterwhite Thursday said the full mobilization would continue at least through Sunday, with officers needing to help with water and food distribution and at shelters around the city.
While Satterwhite said the department hasn't seen a significant rise in crime since the storm hit, he said there has been an increase in car accidents as a result of the many downed traffic signals.
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