HOUSTON — With the retirement of Tory Finner as Houston police chief, there’s already speculation about who will replace him.
While Larry Satterwhite is taking over in the interim, sources tell our sister station, WFAA, that the City of Houston has shown interest in Dallas PD Chief Edgardo Garcia to fill the role permanently.
WFAA is reporting, according to sources, that both the Austin and Houston police departments are showing interest in Garcia.
We reached out to Mayor John Whitmire’s office to see if they were pursuing Garcia and they sent us the following statement.
“Mayor Whitmire wants to improve at HPD, get the department out of the media headlines and return to a focus on public safety. He is confident Acting Chief Satterwhite will be a strong leader and it is too soon to discuss the next steps in finding a new police chief.”
So who is Edgardo Garcia? He was hired as chief in Dallas in 2021 and is currently employed in an at-will capacity, meaning he can leave at any time. The City of Dallas may need to offer a contract to stay, according to WFAA’s sources.
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The interest from Austin, according to WFAA, is because the police chief position has been open since August, when Joseph Chacon retired. It could also be attractive for Garcia because former Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax is now the city manager there. Broadnax hired Garcia in Dallas, according to WFAA.
WFAA reports that under Garcia, violent crime in the city has been down for three consecutive years and is now at its lowest point in six years.
Before Garcia was in Dallas, he was chief of the San Jose Police Department from 2016 to 2020. That’s where he started his law enforcement career.
Whitmire announced Finner’s retirement in a memo that KHOU 11 obtained Tuesday night. Finner is leaving the department amid the scandal involving the ‘lack of personnel’ code that led to thousands of suspended incident cases. Below is KHOU 11’s coverage of