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Squads General Investigations
The Robbery Division is responsible for conducting all follow up and some scene investigations involving robbery, aggravated robbery, extortion and theft from persons. This includes the identification, charging, apprehension and processing of suspects as well as the recovery of property and testimony in court.
The Robbery Division is operational from 6:00 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week and has on call investigators that can make the scenes of the more serious robberies at any other times. Operationally, the Robbery Division is divided into 6 functional investigative units. There are 4 traditional investigative squads organized by geographic area and the Latino squad, which is responsible for investigating crimes against or involving Hispanics. The Robbery Division also provides investigators to the Houston Area Bank Robbery Task Force, which investigates crimes against financial institutions.
Downtown Squad: Responsible for the Downtown, Midtown, and Midwest geographic areas of Houston contained in Districts 1, 2, 10, and 18. In addition, all of these squad members are assigned to the evening shift 2:00 p.m. to midnight and are therefore responsible for all intake and administrative functions that occur during this time.
Latino Squad: The Robbery Division “Latino Squad” was created to meet the growing needs of Spanish speaking investigations. It was determined that Hispanics made up 45% of all the complaints with the trend continuing to increase.
Latino Squad investigators are specifically assigned cases involving Spanish speaking complainants and/or suspects in an attempt to alleviate possible language barriers that could arise during the investigation. The department believes that bilingual investigators can communicate more effectively and relate with the Hispanic community, thus eliciting information and cooperation that will lead to identification and subsequent arrest of robbery suspects.
The squad is comprised of one lieutenant, three sergeants, and eight officers. During 2005, the squad handled 1,265 robbery cases and handled 321 robbery prisoners.
North Squad: Responsible for the North and Northeast geographic areas of Houston contained in Districts 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 21 and 24.
South Squad: Responsible for the South, Southeast, Magnolia, and Clear Lake geographic areas of Houston contained in Districts 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16.
West Squad: Responsible for the West, Southwest and Northwest geographic areas of Houston contained in Districts 4, 5, 17, 19 and 20.
The central Robbery Division is located at HPD Headquarters at 1200 Travis, Downtown Houston. Any of the squads can be contacted at (713) 308-0700.