Mayoral rivals hammer Garcia for drop in HCSO rape clearance rate

The Harris County Sheriff's Office cleared dramatically fewer rape cases under Adrian Garcia compared to his predecessor, a finding opponents are trying to use to undercut the mayoral candidate's experience as a leader.

Considered by many a front-runner to replace term-limited Annise Parker, Garcia has taken heat from other candidates for the percent of reported burglary, robbery or rape cases that led to an arrest, charge or other resolution - called the clearance rate - under his watch.

During the first televised mayoral debate earlier this month, rival candidates Bill King, Chris Bell and Marty McVey pressed Garcia on those numbers, hoping to undercut his management experience.

Between the year before Garcia took office and his final full year as sheriff, clearance rates dropped by 2 percentage points for burglaries and 9 percentage points for robberies.

It is the rape clearance rate, however, that took the greatest tumble during Garcia's time as sheriff. The year before Garcia took over, his predecessor, Tommy Thomas, posted a 42 percent clearance rate for rape cases, according to statistics collected by the Texas Department of Public Safety. By the end of 2009, Garcia's first year in office, that clearance rate had dropped to 19 percent. During Garcia's first five years in office, the agency averaged a clearance rate on rape cases of 18 percent of rape cases; in the five years before Garcia took office, the average was twice that.

Such a drop should raise red flags for any law enforcement official, said Clete Snell, a University of Houston-Downtown criminal justice professor.

"Obviously, it's a big drop," Snell said. "As an administrator, it's the sort of thing I would be concerned about. But the bigger question is why it happened."

Sketchy numbers

Garcia largely skirted that question at the first televised forum, instead calling for more technology to help solve crimes. In an interview this week, however, he pointed to a county-wide hiring freeze put in place after he took office, a growing population and his efforts to put more deputies on patrol to prevent crime.

"No one gave me a memo we were going to be stepping into the Great Recession," Garcia said. "And we had a hiring freeze. But I didn't stop at trying to not only solve the cases we were getting, but I worked to keep cases from coming in. My commitment to putting officers on the street, in spite of the hiring freeze, looking for ways to redeploy deputies out of the jail and put them out on the street and lower the crime rate. So, tough decisions I had to make as a sheriff, tough circumstances - remember, the population exploded in the unincorporated areas of the county."

From 2008 to 2014, the population in Harris County's patrol area grew by more than 419,000 residents, according to DPS.

The number of reported rape cases, however, actually fell by more than 500 during Garcia's first five years in office compared to the previous five, totaling 1,222. Of those, the agency cleared 213.

"We all know how difficult it is for a woman to go in and report a rape," King said earlier this month, "and for there only to be a one in 10 chance that anything can be done to get you justice is absolutely unacceptable."

King was referring to 2014, when he said just 10 percent of rape cases were cleared, a statistic that has been cited in some news stories.

Rape statistics for 2014, however, have not yet been finalized. Moreover, the numbers will reflect a new federal definition of rape that is expected to cover more assaults. Snell cautioned that crime statistics in general can be a "problem area."

"For one thing, the crime statistics that you're talking about are reports to the police and not reflective of all the crimes that are occurring," Snell said. "Rape is one of those areas where that's definitely the case."

More room to criticize

The focus on the rape clearance rates gets at the heart of Garcia's vulnerabilities as the candidate with the highest-profile management history, said Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist. Bell, a former congressman and city councilman, recently accused Garcia of misrepresenting the agency's budget and misleading the public about cases involving inmates who died or were mistreated while in jail.

"Basing his campaign in part on his superior competency in managing a large organization opens him up to this type of criticism," Jones said.

"Particularly with a crime like rape, it's one of the most serious crimes and, after murder, it captures the public fears more than anything else."

Reporter St. John Barned-Smith contributed to this story.