HOUSTON – State Rep. Gene Wu gets right to the point regarding his second letter calling on Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo to release a completed audit of the department’s narcotics division.
“What do you have to hide? Why are you hiding, if you have nothing to hide?” Wu told Channel 2 Investigates.
The letter comes at a time when Acevedo has been front and center nationally on the topic of transparency, telling NBC News, “Well we are completely committed to transparency.”
In front of a microphone, Acevedo has said multiple times he’s committed to transparency, recently stating at a news conference, “I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, I believe in transparency.”
In fact, in an interview in March of last year, Acevedo told Mark43 in a podcast that transparency is the first letter of “TRREAT” a policing acronym. The acronym consists of keywords that Acevedo relies on for law enforcement. In that interview, Acevedo also said, “So transparency, data, (the) information belongs to the public.”
Ashton Woods, of Black Lives Matter Houston, said Acevedo fails to deliver, “His words do not match his actions, at all.”
Woods not pulling any punches with his comments adding, “His rhetoric is snake oil salesman left and right.”
Wu is not the only state representative calling on Acevedo to be transparent.
“Release the information. The bottom line for him regarding this pivotal HPD audit is simple,” Rep. Garnett Coleman said. “The public has a right to know what is in that report.”
There are six other state reps who signed Wu’s letter. Rep. Gina Calanni sent KPRC 2 a lengthy statement, reading, “our city needs full transparency and accountability to build trust in law enforcement.”
Cost also is another point that does not go undetected for Calanni, “After taxpayer dollars funded this important audit, Houstonians deserve to know what went wrong and how HPD will ensure it never happens again.”