What does HPD truly need? It needs re-engineering from top to bottom, ultimately perhaps a wholesale change in leadership. When NYPD implemented CompStat, in its first year more than 75 percent of its precinct commanders retired, were demoted or were reassigned. You either got with the “crime control” (CompStat) program or you “got gone.” However, before CompStat was initiated in 1994, NYPD commenced a re-engineering project and created a dozen teams that were tasked with recommending practicable changes within a dozen organizational components.

Crime is controllable and HPD can do much better. HPD currently has the responsibility for crime control, but isn’t being held accountable for its results. In the July 2007 issue of Badge & Gun, the Houston Police Officers Union newspaper, an editorial advocated the implementation of a CompStat-like system in Houston.
HPD officers are crying for leadership; they know they can do a better job. Meanwhile Houstonians are dying for lack of it.

Excerpts from article originally appearing the Houston Chronicle, October 21, 2007 by ALAN HELFMAN, J.W. ‘JAY’ WALL III and WILLIAM A. WOLF.