Houston police officer relieved of duty after racist videos surface, internal investigation underway<\/a><\/p>\nGonzalez was initially relieved of duty after several videos surfaced online from an Instagram profile. In the clips, a woman, was sitting in a car speaking to the camera, making offensive comments, and using a racial slur regarding African-Americans.<\/p>\n
In another video, the woman is heard saying that she used her role as a law enforcement officer to target African-Americans.<\/p>\n
The Houston Police Department investigated the videos, which were initially shared with a limited audience, through Instagram’s ‘Close Friends’ feature, but later circulated more widely.<\/p>\n
ABC13 has not independently verified that the person in the videos is Gonzalez.<\/p>\n
The Houston Public Information Unit of HPD said the department referred the case to Internal Affairs.<\/p>\n
The mayor of Houston, John Whitmire, sent out a statement on Friday, condemning the videos and urged all Houstonians to respect each other:<\/p>\n
“The comments in the video recorded by former Houston Police Officer Ashley Gonzalez are outrageous and reprehensible. I was shocked and deeply disappointed to hear a Houston police officer use such foul and offensive language. Her actions do not reflect the values of our city or the Houston Police Department, nor the standards we expect from those sworn to serve and protect our community. Let me be clear: this behavior is unacceptable. I applaud HPD Chief Diaz for suspending Gonzalez when the department became aware of the video and firing her as soon as the state civil service process allowed. Let this incident serve as a warning to all City of Houston employees. There is zero tolerance for racism in my administration, and if you see it, report it immediately. I ask all Houstonians to rededicate ourselves to human rights and respect for others.” <\/p>\n
Gonzalez was employed by the department since January 2024 and was assigned to the South Gessner Patrol Division.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The Houston Police Department says an officer has been fired from the department after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[99181,56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-264913","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-99181","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}