Public Safety and Homeland Security

About the Director

Larry J. Satterwhite is a community-oriented public safety executive with 34 years in law enforcement in the fourth largest and most diverse city in the United States. He is the Director of Public Safety and Homeland Security for the City of Houston. Chief Satterwhite is responsible for protecting Houston and the surrounding region. He is a lead-from-thefront problem solver focused on building trust with those he works with and the public at-large.

Chief Satterwhite joined HPD as a cadet on January 22, 1990. During his tenure he has served in Patrol, Investigations, SWAT, Criminal Intelligence, Special Operations, Homeland Security, and Field Operations. He retired from HPD as the Interim Chief of Police and immediately assumed the role of Director of Public Safety and Homeland Security.

Recent accomplishments are overseeing the safety and management of Super Bowl 51 and the World Series in both 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2022, and the Houston Marathon over the past nine years. He was on the ground for the myriad protests throughout the city since 2013 and had directly overseen the response to the riots following the death of George Floyd. And he served as the incident commander in response to one of the worst natural disasters to ever strike the United States in Hurricane Harvey. He has a BS in Criminal Justice and a Master’s in Strategic Leadership. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy Class 264, Senior Management Institute for Police (SMIP), and the Police Executive Leadership Institute (PELI) Class VII. He has made trips to Washington D.C. to work on police-community relations. In 2014 he traveled to China as a part of a Professional Police Exchange and in 2015 he served as part of a United States Delegation to Kazakhstan where he gave a speech on countering homegrown violent extremism. In 2017 he traveled to Istanbul, Turkey to observe security measures for the 22nd World Petroleum Conference as Houston will host in 2021. In 2018, he traveled to the Republic of Kosovo as a part of the ICITAP program to instruct their federal law enforcement on large incident management and later traveled to Israel to attend a National Counter-Terrorism Seminar.

Chief Satterwhite served in the United States Navy before joining the HPD. He enlisted in the United States Naval Reserves and attended basic training in 1988 at the NRTC in San Diego, CA. After boot camp he attended the SEABEE training base at Pt. Hueneme, California, as an Equipment Operator. Upon completion, he returned to Texas, finished his bachelor’s degree, and met his military obligation as a reservist. He was Honorably Discharged in August 1995.

As the COVID 19 pandemic emerged across the globe, Chief Satterwhite served as the department’s incident commander in the management and mitigation of the viral threat. He helped lead the way in building a strong partnership between local, state, and federal response agencies as well as our dedicated healthcare workers with all our major hospitals. He was an architect and helped establish the first federally supported Community Based Testing Sites (CBTS) in Houston in March of 2020 and set up some of the first mass vaccination sites in 2021.

Chief Satterwhite is married to his wonderful wife and has two loving, hardworking young adult kids. His greatest skill is understanding the value of the men and women surrounding him and helping them grow into positions where they can be successful and the organization can flourish. It’s about relationships.