Houston Mayor: We Won't Tolerate Racism

Houston Mayor John Whitmire doesn't hold back on tough decisions—including firing a top-performing police officer for using racial slurs, despite her stellar academy record. In this episode from City Hall, Mayor Whitmire opens up about how his personal faith guides his leadership of America's fourth-largest city, shares scripture that shapes his staff meetings, and addresses criticism head-on about Houston's $500 million FIFA World Cup preparations. He reveals why FIFA called Houston the "most prepared city" in America, explains the real story behind Blue Santa program changes, and announces historic numbers: Houston now has 5,400 police officers and 400 new firefighters—the largest public safety force in the city's history. From infrastructure investments to inclusive leadership philosophy, this conversation tackles both the achievements and challenges facing Houston as it prepares for the international stage.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So many of these various improvements and changes we've made, uh, they're just turning it on because FIFA's coming.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

How do you respond to that? I think they have a right to be concerned, and at every FIFA planning meeting I'm in, I say.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

From City Hall in downtown Houston, this is 901 Bank Meeting inside the mayor's office. Mr. Mayor, welcome back to the show. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Oh, and thanks for having me, and thank you for your cooperation and uh engagement and spreading the word across Houston, uh, the services that we're providing and the direction the city's going.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

I appreciate that, sir. I want to start with something different this week. Um I want to talk about your faith a little bit. Uh recently you were at the Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. You were at the Fountain of Praise for the 35th pastoral anniversary, the Greater Houston Prayer Breakfast. Um, how are these spiritual events different for you from your typical day-to-day?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Well, I I enjoy them. Uh I grew up in uh a Baptist church, and so um I understand uh the faith that people follow. I also certainly respect the diversity of our faiths in Houston, our mosque or synagogues. It's my duty to be inclusive, and I visit all I was in the synagogue two weeks ago for a for a panel discussion. And so I regularly go to church. I do not go for political purposes, I stay for the entire service. I go for the message uh this weekend. I definitely got all prayed up, and it it helps me in my job, but it also is certainly part of the community engagement, but it also gives me strength. Uh in fact, I've already texted a couple of pastors this morning about I appreciate their prayers for the city, and go ahead and throw me in the prayer if you would. So uh my faith plays a role in my job with my family.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Well, that was one of a follow-up question I wanted to ask you. How does your faith play a role uh in your day-to-day life?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Day-to-day life uh it gives me strength. Uh uh I follow the scriptures that I grew up uh learning. Uh you got to remember, I went to legislature in 73 at 23, so I started being invited to uh services across Acres Home, Independent Heights, uh across the Greater Heights area that I represented. So I got to use my faith to to hear from folks and listen to the message of pastors. Been asked to deliver a sermon or two. Some people think I still deliver a sermon when I get a roll, get on a roll about how great a city Houston is. But, you know, I I share with my with my staff, 1 John, 4th chapter, 20 and 21st verse, it says, if you say you love God who you can't see, but you hate your neighbor who you can see, then you're a liar. For how can you love someone you can't see, but then hate someone? So I use that lesson in Scripture in my daily life, in my work, in my contacts in the city council chambers. So, you know, I I don't mix religion and government, but I certainly know personally that my faith plays a role, as it does for so many Houstonians, in the diversity of our beliefs and faiths. In fact, when I'm asked to give an invocation, I regularly just say, I'm gonna ask everyone to go to a moment of silence out of respect for your faith and your spiritual leader. I don't like to hear uh individuals an invocation. Now it happens, and we have to be tolerant. But really, when I'm in charge or asked to do an invocation, it's really more a moment of silence for everyone to go to their faith in their own respectful private way or public way if they want to go public.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

I want to shift focus, talk a little bit about infrastructure and mobility. The new uh uh East End substation for Metro opened up. Why is this important, in your opinion, for the neighborhood and for commuters?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Well, it's a response to the community. Uh public safety is my highest priority, and we're making such improvements across Houston with recruitment of cadets for HPD. We have increased HPD by 800 successful graduates, and our force is 5,400, the highest in history, same as fire, with 400 additional firefighters. This will address some of the overtime concerns of some of my colleagues. But this specific substation brought and opened the day before yesterday by Metro is going to reassure the public that public safety is our highest priority, certainly in the east end. Here's what created a challenging situation. Before I got here, it was approved that Greyhound, which was downtown, that attracted homeless and also some release from our prisons in Huntsville. I'll explain that in a moment. The Greyhound West, uh Greyhound bus station was approved for Harrisburg. It alarmed the community. It did attract some elements that were not welcomed by the community in the terms of homeless and those released from TDCJ. They take the Greyhound from Huntsville to Houston, they get off, and uh there's no real true re-entry program. So, to reassure the public that public safety is our priority across Houston, Metro wisely opened a substation for their Metro police on Harrisburg. It has been so well received. The community is visiting, the community is using it for reports, uh, public safety services. We're collaborating out of that office with HPD, Constable Trevino, so that's going to be a real great addition for that community, and it will also be the model for Metro to go across our city. Metro knows that its services need to improve and be cleaner and on time. And also we're looking at for some technology to improve uh the mobility and the mobility options through Metro. The micro transit is so well received, small neighborhood services by Metro. Started in third ward, now it's in the heights, and it is just growing by leaps and bounds. The ability to pick someone up and take them a short distance, maybe a short distance to a bus line or a rail line. So mobility is a focus of my administration in Metro, and I can't say enough about Chief Tin, the chief of the Metro police who came out of HBD as a chief, assistant chief over there. And then, of course, the chair of Metro, Elizabeth Brock, is a visionaire and we're making improvements daily.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

I think an interesting uh point of conversation for Houstonians, especially as much as our city has grown with so many transplants coming in from other places, is this kind of a battle that some people see it as between cars and public transit. You know, Houston was built for cars. How do you see that kind of growing and developing, or what's your vision of that?

SPEAKER_00 7:37

I think we have to have options. Certainly, any great city has a public transit system that works in its own time. And we're constantly working with the metro leadership to do better. But also we have a challenge because of the people that travel to Houston each and each day. 700,000 people travel to Houston each day to work or attend events. We have to provide for that 700,000. It's a challenge to our infrastructure. So many of them come through the toll road system, they come through our inner system, our freeway systems, they're getting to Houston, and then we have to provide for them. Public safety services, but also it's a real challenge on our uh on our infrastructure. Public safety in most posts was the highest priority. I think because we've done such a good job of addressing that with great leadership. Now, infrastructure is obviously right up there near public safety. This year we're gonna pave a thousand street lanes in the city of Houston. That's amazing. We're gonna spend $500 million on infrastructure, drainage, and road uh improvements. So we're moving in the right direction. It's the most ever, but we still have a lot of work to do.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

A lot of that work has uh coincided with FIFA, which is uh the big big uh World Cup events that are coming to Houston. As uh at the time of this recording, we're 42 days away. Uh, a challenging question for you here, Mr. Mayor. How how do you respond to the people who say so many of these various improvements and changes we've made? Oh, they're just turning it on because FIFA's coming.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

How do you respond to that? I think they have a right to be concerned, and at every FIFA planning meeting I'm in, I say, wait, this is great, we're doing this for FIFA. We're on the international stage and we're going to have a successful, safe FIFA. But I want the same concern for Houstonians. That's that speaks to the homeless issues, and we're we're very aggressively dealing with the homeless by opening a new residential, a transition site. But that's not just for FIFA, that's because Houstonians do not want the homeless in their neighborhood or in our central business district, the infrastructure. I can go on and on. We are preparing for FIFA, but it's really a response to Houstonians for quality of life issues in their neighborhood, repairing our streets, our broken water mains, our our illegal dumping. You know, we've been fighting illegal dumping since I got here, and solid waste has a constant challenge. They pick stuff up in certain neighborhoods, and it'll be right back there in two weeks. So that has nothing to do with FIFA. Now, we are ready for a FIFA. Uh FIFA tells us we're the most prepared city in the U.S. of any of the major cities. And they call us a grown-up city because that's the way we conduct our business. But I want to also say the good news is there will be a legacy to the World Cup. Twenty-three soccer fields will be in our neighborhoods that are going to be built with FIFA funding. I was at Moody Park with uh Commissioner Garcia and Councilmember Castillo the other day. Big launch to have legacy soccer fields at that location. We couldn't have done that as quick as we did because but for the uh FIFA contributions and activities. So I could go on and on the improvement of our community because we want to showcase what a great city this is, our diversity, our culture. When when I was meeting with a group from the Congo the other day who's going to play uh a game here, I said, encourage your visitors to go into our communities, go to the East End, go go to the International District in Southwest Houston, go to TSU, see our future engineers and leaders. So it's just an exciting time to be a Houstonian, but we're getting ready for FIFA, but it's really going to improve the quality of life for all Houstonians.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Well, it's interesting because FIFA, in that sense, leaves something behind other than just garbage and you know the what the leftovers of the parties. They're leaving something meaningful behind. That's nice. Uh, I want to swing back to public safety. This was uh not a bright spot for the Houston Police Department, uh, an officer, and we'll we'll just leave her name out of it, not to draw more attention to it, but someone caught on video using racial slurs. And I know that you in the department, this made you very uncomfortable and you handled it as quickly as you legally could. Some people may have an idea about what I'm talking about from an Instagram post, but for those that don't, sure you care to elaborate an officer that uh had drank too much, uh, used racial attacks, racial slurs, the N-word.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

It's not representative of HPD or our great city. So she was immediately when the video became public and the chief saw it, sent her home, suspended her at home, and then when the time allowed under civil service protection, state law, he fired her. They asked me not to speak out because I don't want to prejudice her arbitration hearing. So, yes, we're all outraged. We're reviewing all the the the procedure of how you could detect that. Um I think that a lot of us that have uh have witnessed uh social experiences when you get to drinking too much, you often show who you really are, and uh it won't be tolerated. In fact, I use it as a shout-out and an alarm across city government. We won't tolerate that, whether you're a first responder or you're working in some other department. It has no place in our society, and I want every I want to thank everyone that that uh sounded the alarm and took action to speak out, our faith community, our NACP. All of us were very unified in the city of Houston of not tolerating racism or slurs or disrespect, bullying, any disrespect to your fellow uh Houstonian or human will not be tolerated. That lady was fired, and we have contacted the state of Texas who issues law enforcement's license to say that she should never work in law enforcement again. It's a real tragic. She was number one in her class, number one in her high school uh law enforcement academy here at HAHD, but she made a terrible mistake that will not be tolerated.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

And it also goes to show, I mean, we can only do so much to weed out every single bad apple in a bunch, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yes, I'm I'm very pleased that the response was what it should have been. It was expeditious, it was strong, and it was final. You know, uh I guess it makes a difference and it concerns folks that she's out patrolling. There's people asking for a review of any cases that she might have been involved in. I think that's very appropriate and will be followed up on. But whether you had a ball game, um, hell a little league game, you see people that are bad actors and bad role models and mentors. This is particularly egregious because it's a Houston police officer. So we took the appropriate act as soon as it was public, send her home, don't come around HPD, and then by the end of the week, turn in your badge. So I applaud Chief Diaz in the response, and uh I think we need to use this as a learning experience that we still we've come a long ways, but we still have a long ways to go. Sure. All right, I want to end on a bright spot.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Sure. So I want to close it out like that. I do want to talk about the Blue Santa program, the HPD holiday-led program that gives gifts to children. It was canceled initially after some issues, but you and I have talked uh this week, and you tell me you are committed to bringing this back. Why is it important to you, and then what does that commitment look like?

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Well, first of all, it hasn't gone anywhere. It just the chief, who is a can-do police chief, Chief Diaz, very much involved in the community, is reviewing a program, reviewing officers' participation. Of course, it's a blue Santa, which is named because of the HPD involvement. But record keeping, state laws, uh, overtime, a lot of things went into consideration to see if we could maybe, instead of making it supported by on-duty police officers, that we could go to the private sector, and there are several just jumping. In fact, I got an email yesterday from a business. We're gonna have the best and largest Blue Santa ever. It's just not gonna be using public dollars to the extent that it has in the past. So that's just part of our efficiencies, but still the enjoyment. Uh I could go to a list of people that are even going to give more toys and gifts now, and HPD will be leading the charge for Blue Santa, but it's gonna be bigger than ever before. That's a good question to ask me about.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

I don't want to spoil any of the businesses either. I'm not gonna ask any for any nigga. I'd love to.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

There'll be some you'll recognize, and then some I've mid-sized, smaller business. Everybody wants to be involved in blue Santa.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

I mean, who doesn't love kids at Christmas and the whole game? I mean, it's just the whole joy beautiful stuff.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Houston's known for uh uniting us under a blue Santa bigger and better. All right, Mr. Mayor. Well, thanks for this week.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Appreciate it, and uh we've got more to talk about in the future.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Let's go to work. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Let's go to work.