Art Acevedo, Houston’s police chief from November 2016 to March 2021, has bounced around since leaving that job, serving as Miami’s police chief for just six months before he was fired in October 2021, then as the interim police chief in Aurora, Colorado, a job he left on Monday after serving 13 months. Acevedo was in the news this week for two other reasons, neither of which reflect well on his performance as a top cop.
After leaving Aurora, Acevedo planned to take a $271,000-a-year position as an assistant city manager overseeing police in Austin, where he served as police chief for nine years before moving to Houston following a job-threatening reprimand. But on Tuesday, objections from Austin City Council members and the local district attorney, who highlighted a scandal involving rape kits that went untested during Acevedo’s prior tenure, prompted him to reconsider . The next day, the Houston City Council approved an additional $1.7 million to defend Acevedo and the city against federal lawsuits stemming from a lethal 2019 drug raid based on a fraudulent search warrant, raising the total allocated for that purpose to nearly $3 million.