Noted Pervert, Disgraced Police Chief, Whitmire’s “Best Friend” Headed Back To Texas
Last summer, a police officer in Aurora, Colorado shot and killed a 14-year old boy named Jor’Dell Richardson. In the wake of the shooting, Art Acevedo, Aurora’s Police Chief, told reporters that the boy had a “semiautomatic firearm pistol” in his possession. That wasn’t true. Eight days later, Acevedo was forced to clarify that the “semi automatic firearm” was actually just a pellet gun.
Dismayed by Acevedo’s handling of their son’s death, the family called for Acevedo’s resignation. Other community leaders echoed those calls, including Pastor Thomas Mayes, a prominent Aurora pastor, who publicly criticized Chief Acevedo: “You failed. You failed Jor'Dell, you failed this family, you failed the community.”
Yesterday, just months after calls for his resignation, Acevedo announced that he’s stepping down from the department—and heading back home to Texas.
The timing of Acevedo’s resignation raises flags.
John Whitmire took office as Houston’s mayor earlier this month, and the new mayor told Texas Monthly that he and Acevedo are “best of friends.” Thus, followers of Houston politics are wondering: is Acevedo angling for a return to the Houston Police Department?
Aurora was Acevedo’s third stop on his dishonorable tour of police departments across the country.
In October of 2021, Art Acevedo was fired as Chief of the Miami Police Department after just six months on the job. His firing followed a racist remark–“it’s like the Cuban mafia runs Miami PD.” For those not in the know, like Art Acevedo apparently, “Cuban Mafia” is an extremely offensive slur because Fidel Castro used it as a derogatory term to describe Cubans who fled his communist dictatorship for Miami.
The Miami police union, which represents the rank and file officers in Acevedo’s department, held a vote and found that its members had “no confidence” in Acevedo’s leadership.
His run as Houston’s police chief didn’t fare much better. Indeed, Acevedo’s tenure was marred by so much scandal that even Doug Griffith, President of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, celebrated his departure: “I’m glad he’s not our problem anymore.”
Here’s a deeper dive into Acevedo’s scandal-plagued record:
Took sexually explicit photographs of a woman who later sued him for sexual harassment. When Art Acevedo was an officer with the California Highway Patrol, a woman with who he had a months-long affair sued him in federal court for $5 million, claiming, according to the Los Angeles Times, that Art kept “sexually explicit Polaroid photographs” in the glove box of his state-issued car and showed them to his law enforcement buddies. Acevedo acknowledged that he took the photographs, but said that he gave them back to the woman after their affair ended. Acevedo said that a colleague in the California Highway Patrol accidentally saw the photographs in the glove box of Acevedo’s personal vehicle. The women and Acevedo reached a settlement, but the details are confidential.
Sued for not taking rape seriously. Three sexual assault survivors sued Acevedo for denying “female victims of sexual assault in Austin and Travis County” their right to “equal access to justice and equal protection of the law”. The women said that they have been failed by the “people sworn to protect them” and that government officials like Art Acevedo “have instead disbelieved, dismissed, and denigrated female victims of sexual assault, failed to have DNA evidence tested for years at a time, refused to investigate or prosecute cases of sexual assault against female survivors…”. In particular, the lawsuit alleges that Acevedo:
Allowed “a massive backlog of untested rape kits” to pile up during his tenure, which ballooned to 2,700 by the time he left Austin to become the Houston Police Chief in 2016.
Tolerated a toxic culture for women, allowing “a wall in [the department’s] sexual assault unit on which numerous pictures of female victims were posted—each one representing a ‘false report’ that officers had unilaterally determined had no merit. Officers posted pictures of these ‘debunked’ female accusers on the wall as a matter of pride, as trophies of their ‘investigations.’”
Participated in the toxic culture by, for example, referring to allegations of sexual assault between police officers on his force as “bad sex” or “something the female officer just regretted after the fact, despite evidence demonstrating injury to the female officer”.
Failed to arrest people who committed sexual assaults. During the last year of Acevedo’s tenure, the Austin Police Department made 132 arrests for rape despite at least 747 reported rapes that year. The Department claimed that it “cleared” another 256 cases by what they called “exceptional” clearance. However, an investigation showed that the department systematically misclassified cases as cleared by exceptional means. A leading expert on police investigations of sexual assault cases told ProPublica that classifying rape cases in this way was “misleading at best and duplicitous at worst.” The Sergeant who supervised the Sex Crimes Unit during Acevedo’s tenure said that she felt pressure from the department’s leadership to “clear” more cases by using the exceptional circumstances designation. This practice is harmful because, in the Sergeant’s own words, “It gives a false sense to the community that this case has been thoroughly investigated and closed… it’s not truthful.”
“They can’t unrape you.” Two Austin Police officers accidentally recorded themselves whistling at a woman who was walking past them. The officers can be heard saying on the recording, “Go ahead and call the cops. They can’t unrape you.” Both officers start laughing and one officer says again, “They can’t unrape you!” Acevedo gave the men a slap on the wrist and allowed them to remain employed as Austin Police officers. Less than a year later, one of the officers from the recording was involved in another caught-on-camera disgrace for what local news described as “belittling a homeless woman” in a wheelchair. The officer can be heard saying “I don’t give a shit. I want you to get this stuff out of here” referring to the woman’s belongings. The woman said, “Please, sir” and “I’m sorry” and again, “Please, sir, I’m trying to be honest with you.” The officer responded, “And I am being honest with you. I’m being brutally honest with you. I am not liking what I’m seeing under these overpasses.” Acevedo called the behavior “rude” and “unprofessional,” but proceeded to give the officer another slap on the wrist.
Austin’s Solve Rate for Homicide Plummeted Under Acevedo. As recently as 2011, the Houston Police Department solved 89% of the murders that happened in the city. That was before Art Acevedo came to town. An investigative report in the Houston Chronicle from 2020--the last full year Acevedo served as Chief of the Houston Police Department--found that the murder clearance rate had plummeted to 49%. In fact, the murder clearance rate under Acevedo was lower each and every year that he served as police chief in Houston than in any of the six years that preceded his arrival. An internal audit revealed that members of Acevedo’s staff blamed him for making policy decisions that reduced the overall numbers of homicide detectives. Asked to comment on the Houston police department’s declining murder solve rate under Acevedo’s leadership, a leading national expert on clearance rates told the Chronicle that “those levels are low by almost any standards.”
Repeatedly reprimanded by the City of Austin. Acevedo was the subject of numerous disciplinary memoranda from the City of Austin. Here are some illustrative snippets.
In a 2011 memo from the Austin City Manager, with the subject line “management improvement,” the city manager raised with Chief Acevedo, “operational and judgment concerns I expect you to improve” before further chastising the chief: “I expect you to exercise proper judgment…”.
Art Acevedo was reprimanded again in 2013 for threatening to launch a baseless internal affairs investigation into the husband of a defense lawyer who was an officer on Acevedo’s force. The 2013 memo from the City Attorney called Acevedo’s behavior “inappropriate and unacceptable,” and directed him “to apologize … in person and in writing.”
A 2016 memo from Austin’s city manager informed Acevedo that the city had formally reprimanded him and docked him five days of pay for inappropriate public comments following the killing of an unarmed, naked teenager by an Austin police officer. The city manager wrote: “this matter again concerns me with your lack of judgment” and “your failure to follow my directives in this matter.” The city manager continued: “I want to make clear that future misconduct or ... showing further poor judgment in the performance of your job duties, will lead to additional personnel action up to and including termination.” An internal investigation into Acevedo’s behavior, memorialized in the memo, found that Acevedo committed “the offense of insubordination” against the city manager, echoed that he “exhibited poor judgment”, and recommended that the Chief “be made aware of the perception by staff that retaliation by him is real.”
And then he did it again. Acevedo had to apologize again after he made insensitive remarks again following the arrest of a young woman outside the University of Texas campus. The police handcuffed and arrested the young woman for disregarding traffic signals while she was jogging and then failing to provide the officers with identification. After a community uproar over the arrest, which was captured on video, Acevedo held a press conference where he told reporters the young woman was “lucky I wasn’t the arresting officer” because the officers had not “charged her with resisting” arrest, explaining that “I wouldn’t have been as generous.” Acevedo continued: “In other cities, there’s cops who are actually committing sexual assaults on duty, so I thank God this is what passes for a controversy in Austin, Texas.”
“Murder, corruption, lies, sex, and perjury – the history of the Houston Police Department, and in particular, the Houston Police Department’s Narcotics Squad 15 plays out like a scene from Training Day.” That’s the opening lines of a federal lawsuit filed against Acevedo during his tenure as Houston’s police chief. The lawsuit stemmed from a botched drug raid that left two people, and their dog, shot dead by Houston police officers. In the immediate aftermath of the raid, Acevedo told the media that his team had “heroically made the entry” and that he was “really proud of them.” But, a Washington Post investigation, detailed the inconsistencies between Acevedo’s version of events and video and documentary evidence provided by neighbors and independent investigators. Most damningly, gunshots can be heard on a recording captured outside of the home a full 30 minutes after Acevedo said the raid had ended. The officers also said that the shots were fired inside the home, but investigators found that the woman was killed by a bullet that was fired outside of the home, casting further doubt on the officers’ claims. Nonetheless, even six months after the raid, Acevedo continued to praise Squad 15, saying of the officers who killed the family: “I still think they’re heroes -- and they are heroes,” and even describing the officers as “victims”.
In December, 2021, CNN announced that Acevedo would serve as the network’s new law enforcement analyst, a move that Law Officer magazine summarized succinctly: “Tainted Former Police Chief Heading to CNN.”
Responses to CNN’s Hiring of Acevedo:
